AMN / NEW DELHI
The Supreme Court Friday dismissed a plea for declaring the offences of rape, sexual assault, outraging of modesty, voyeurism and stalking in the Indian Penal Code as gender-neutral.
The petitioner SC lawyer Rishi Malhotra had said, the crime of rape should be gender neutral, making a woman also punishable for the offence. The plea had come at time when the Supreme Court, on a similar petition asked the Centre to examine if adultery law can be made gender-neutral.
Rejecting the plea, the three-judge bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said, it is an imaginative situation and Parliament can deal with it as per social needs.
It also said that law is open for change by Parliament and it cannot interfere with it.
The plea said that law cannot be discriminatory against men and that only a man can be punished for the offences of rape and sexual assault.
“We are not saying a woman cannot rape a man but these come under a different offence under IPC”, CJI Misra said.
“Crime has no gender and neither should our laws. Women commit crime for the same reasons that men do. The law does not and should not distinguish between criminals and every person who has committed an offence is liable to punishment under the Code”, argued Malhotra.
‘Women too commit Rape’ Says the petition:-
“In a recent study it was found that out of 222 Indian men surveyed, 16.1% had been coerced into having sex. Despite rape of men not researched as widely as rape of female, there are several statistics to suggest that men are raped and the prevalence of men rape is wider than is generally presumed,” note the petition.
Malhotra argues that Article 15 of the Constitution prohibits discrimination against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them….
“Crimes like rape and murder do not see age, caste or even gender or sexual orientation. Rape is seen across the extremes of age, sex and geographical boundaries. Thus, it is only the development and application of a gender neutral law that will be be effective in improving the reporting and registering of such crimes,” says the PIL .
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