Sex with a wife who is less than 18 is illegal and will now be treated as rape, India's Supreme Court has ruled, stripping yet one more legal protection from the already illegal practice of taking a child bride.
Marriage to girls under 18 and boys under 21 is banned in India, but the practice of child marriage is widely prevalent in backward and rural areas amid weak enforcement of laws, poverty and patriarchal social norms.
The court on Wednesday struck down an exception in Indian rape laws which permit sexual intercourse between a man and his wife as long as she is older than 15, said petitioner Vikram Srivastava, founder of a volunteer group, Independent Thought, which focuses on rights issues of women, children and marginalized communities.
"The judgement says that, if a man has sexual intercourse with a wife who is below 18 years, it is an offence," Srivastava said.
"If the minor wife complains against the husband within a year of sexual intercourse, the person can be prosecuted for rape."
The court also ruled that lowering the legal age for sex to 15, if the girl is married, would be illegal and unconstitutional, Srivastava said.
Under the Indian Penal Code, a man having sex with a girl aged 18 or less, with or without her consent, has committed a crime. But, until Wednesday, the legal clause provided an exception if the girl was his wife and not below 15.
According to a 2014 study by UNICEF, India accounted for a third of child brides globally - more than 230 million Indian women married before they were 18.
The latest edition of India's National Family Health Survey shows a significant decline in underage brides - 27 per cent of girls in India got married before their 18th birthday in 2016, versus 47 per cent in 2006.
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