Indian police has registered a case against an Australian citizen for allegedly forcing “unnatural sex” on his wife and domestic violence.
The police in Pune, in the western state of Maharashtra, registered a First Information Report (FIR) against the 35-year-old businessman after his wife, an Iranian national, complained that her husband forced her to have anal sex, beat her up and threatened to kill her if she reported it to the police.
On Thursday, the Australian national has been charged with criminal intimidation, intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace, voluntarily causing hurt and indulging in carnal intercourse against the order of nature.
The Pune Mirror reported that the woman and the man got married in July 2015 after meeting through mutual friends. She reportedly told the police her alleged ordeal began in December 2017.
The woman alleged her husband would wake her up at odd hours of the night for “unnatural sex” and beat her up if she rebuffed him.
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The man who runs a business in Pune has not been arrested yet, but if found guilty of the sexual offence, he could face up to ten years in jail.
The Indian law makes any non-procreative sex illegal. Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code - first introduced during the British rule of India - was aimed at criminalising gay sex.
The section was decriminalised in 2009 by the Delhi High Court before the ruling was overturned by the top court of India in 2013.
In 2016, in a similar case, a judge of a district court sought advice from the higher judiciary on whether a husband could be punished under section 377 [indulging in unnatural sex] when marital rape is not a crime in India.
After the December 2012 horrific gang rape and murder of a medical student in Delhi, the definition of rape was expanded to include forced oral sex and penetration to any extent.
However, the law does not consider a sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife rape unless the wife is under fifteen years of age.
