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Marital Rape And Women's Bodily Autonomy: A Constitutional Perspective

In legal systems across the globe, marital rape still remains one of the unaddressed and contested forms of sexual violence. This notion about rape is also deeply rooted in the Indian region which is immensely driven by the patriarchal constructs of marriage and has historically commodified a women’s bodies. In the Indian Penal Code, 1860 marital rape exemption was embedded under the Section 375, which got replaced by the Section 63 of the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 and still denied a married women the constitutional guarantees like dignity, bodily autonomy and equality. In this particular article we have taken up constitutional analysis of marital rape, witnessing its implications on Article 14, 15, 19 and 21 of the Constitution of India. It does not just examine but also surveys landmark judicial decisions alongside international human rights instruments and comparative jurisdictions. The article argues about how marital rape exemption is constitutionally untenable and its existence depicts a fundamental failure of the Indian state towards the women’s bodily integrity, sexual autonomy and the right to life with dignity which is majorly drawn from the constitutional jurisprudence, feminist legal theory and socio legal scholarship.