Post by Pruthviraj Joshi

I recently came to read this Madhya Pradesh High Court ruling—where forced “unnatural sex” by a husband was held to be cruelty but not rape—and it had been bothering me. Not because the Court got the law wrong, but because it shows how limited the law still is. Under the current framework of the IPC, the marital rape exception continues to exist. So even if consent is clearly absent, the act doesn’t legally qualify as rape if it happens within marriage. The Court simply applied what the law says. But that’s exactly the problem. It’s difficult to ignore the contradiction here. In every other situation, consent is the foundation of defining rape. Within marriage, it suddenly becomes secondary—or worse, irrelevant. That idea feels out of place in 2026. Calling such conduct “cruelty” does provide a remedy, but it also softens the reality of what is actually happening. There’s a difference between acknowledging harm and naming it for what it is. This isn’t really about criticizing the judiciary. Courts don’t rewrite statutes—they interpret them. The larger issue is whether the law itself is keeping up with the values it claims to protect, especially dignity and bodily autonomy. At some point, we have to confront an uncomfortable question: Does marriage imply permanent consent? Because if the answer is no—and it should be—then the law needs to reflect that clearly. Until then, decisions like this will continue to feel technically correct, but fundamentally unsatisfying.