Above: Delhi High Court
In an effort to neutralize gender biases in the many acts that govern society in India, especially in laws relating to criminal activity, a civil petition has come up which the Delhi High Court has accepted. The petition wants the court to declare as unconstitutional “gender-specific” sections of the IPC and punishment under these sections.
On Wednesday (September 27) a bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar asked the Centre to reply, within three weeks, on this petition.
The petition basically stems from the premise that if a male alleges that a female raped him, he is not seen as a ‘real man’ because the stereotypical patriarchal assumptions that men are superior and stronger to women comes into the picture.
Petitioner Sanjiv Kumar, an activist, said in his petition: “Section 375 (rape) and Section 376 (punishment for rape), in its current form, which is gender specific and not gender neutral doesn’t secure males and thus doesn’t stand the constitutional test and fails in Right to Privacy.” Kumar also explained before the court that according to the Supreme Court judgment on Right to Privacy as a Fundamental Right on August 24, all genders have equal protection of law under the Constitution.
“After the Right to Privacy ruling, where consent and bodily integrity of each citizen is now a fundamental right as part of the freedoms and are intrinsic part of right to life and personal liberty under Article 21, female and male both have equality before law and equal protection of law under Article 14 guaranteed by Part III of the Constitution,” said the petitioner.
“Similarly, if the rape victim is male, he has right of equal protection, equal to that of a female in like circumstances,” he said.
Kumar also pointed out that The Criminal Law (Amendment) Ordinance 2013, which came immediately after the Nirbhaya Rape case, contained gender neutral laws. However, it had to be repealed due to protests from certain sections of society.
The petitioner also relied on examples like the murder of a minor boy in Ryan International School. It said that a boy looses the right of protection under POCSO Act once he turns 18.
The plea contended that the idea of patriarchy was the ground as to why men refused to come out in public to report such crimes against them. “It becomes very difficult to accept that there is a single reality in rape – that is, men rape women – and this act has a meaning so different for men that it cannot be labelled as rape. If a male alleges that a female raped him, he is not seen as a real man,” the petition argued.
The court posted the matter for further hearing on October 23.
—Ashima Chadha (India Legal Bureau)