Adultery: No Longer A Criminal Offense.

India's top court has ruled adultery is no longer a crime, striking down a 158-year-old colonial-era law which it said treated women as male property.

Previously any man who had sex with a married woman, without the permission of her husband, had committed a crime.

Who challenged the law?

Last August, Joseph Shine, a 41-year-old Indian businessman living in Italy, petitioned the Supreme Court to strike down the law. He argued that it discriminated against men by only holding them liable for extra-marital relationships, while treating women like objects.

It sought to have section 497 of the Indian penal code and another similar provision made gender neutral. But the court said the offence, which carried a prison sentence of up to five years, was arbitrary and needed to go.

What did the adultery law say?

The law dictated that the woman could not be punished as an abettor. Instead, the man was considered to be a seducer.

It also did not allow women to file a complaint against an adulterous husband.
A man accused of adultery could be sent to a prison for a maximum of five years, made to pay a fine, or both.

What did the judges say?

All five Supreme Court judges hearing the case said the law was archaic, arbitrary and unconstitutional.

“It is time to say husband is not the master,” said the chief justice, Dipak Misra. He quoted John Stuart Mill: “Legal subordination of one sex over another is wrong in itself.”

Indu Malhotra, one of two women among the 25 judges on the court, said: “The time when wives were invisible to the law, and lived in the shadows of their husbands, has long since gone by.”

Many Indians were not even aware the law existed. However, after such decision of the court people have been largely supportive of the verdict.