SC says IPC provision on adultery violates Right to Equality

The Indian Penal Code's provision on adultery violates the fundamental Right to Equality as it treats married men and women differently, the Supreme Court said today.

Terming IPC's Section 497 "manifestly arbitrary", a five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said it treats a married woman as "chattel" because her relationship with a married man depends on the "consent or connivance of her husband".

The bench, also comprising Justices R F Nariman, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Indu Malhotra, which is hearing a petition challenging the constitutional validity of Section 497, was critical of a part of the provision stating that no offence of adultery is made out if a married woman enters into a sexual relationship with a married man with the consent of her husband.

Section 497 of the 158-year-old IPC says: "Whoever has sexual intercourse with a person who is and whom he knows or has reason to believe to be the wife of another man, without the consent or connivance of that man, such sexual intercourse not amounting to the offence of rape, is guilty of the offence of adultery."