Article 14 and Article 21
the constitutional grounds of challenge
Petitioners challenge the marital rape exception primarily on the grounds that it violates Article 14 (equality before law) by creating an unreasonable classification between married and unmarried women who suffer identical non-consensual acts, and Article 21 (right to life and personal liberty), which the Supreme Court has read to include the right to bodily autonomy, privacy and dignity.
- The right to privacy, including decisional autonomy over one's body, was affirmed as a fundamental right under Article 21 by a nine-judge bench in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017)
- Article 14 permits reasonable classification only if it has an intelligible differentia and a rational nexus to the object sought to be achieved; petitioners argue marital status bears no rational nexus to whether non-consensual sex constitutes harm
- The Union's counter-position invokes the separation of powers doctrine: that defining and creating criminal offences is a legislative function under Article 245, and courts should not create a new offence through judicial interpretation
● Tracked since March 10, 2026 · last seen September 09, 2026 · updates as the daily brief publishes
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