This Wednesday, India’s Supreme Court made a landmark ruling that quashed a loophole in child rape cases that’s been used to allow perpetrators escape rape allegations without punishment.
India’s justice system has always considered rape an illegal act, with one glaring exception. Courts have not, historically, recognized accusations of marital rape except for when the accuser was 15 years old or younger, and, though, child marriage was criminalized in 1978 and a 2012 law stated that minors (age of consent in India is 18) did not have the right to consent to sex made sex with any child a crime, there remained a contradiction between the laws passed in 1940, protecting wives 15 years old and younger, and the more recent rulings.
The October 12 ruling still leaves wives over the age of 18 without legal recourse but advocates of women’s and wives’ rights are hailing the decision as a step in the right decision.
The new law establishes any sexual behavior with a person under the age of 18, whether the intercourse occurs between married persons or not, rape. In 2015, there were 24,651 reported cases of rape, which bore a 29.4 percent conviction rate. Some critics of the law say that real test will be implementation of this law, and whether the law will be retroactive is also stirring some discussion.
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