Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code, now re-enacted as Section 63 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, continues to exempt non-consensual sexual intercourse by a husband with his adult wife from the offence of rape. This paper examines whether that exemption can survive constitutional scrutiny. It begins with the Supreme Court's decision in Independent Thought v. Union of India, which read down the exception for minor wives but left the position of adult married women unresolved, and situates that gap within the seventeenth-century common-law doctrine, traced to Sir Matthew Hale, from which the exemption originates. The paper then examines the exemption against Articles 21, 14 and 15 of the Constitution, arguing that the right to privacy and decisional autonomy recognised in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India extends to a married woman's control over her own body, and that a classification based solely on marital status cannot justify withholding criminal protection from an entire category of victims. It considers and responds to concerns about evidentiary misuse and the stability of the institution of marriage, arguing that such concerns call for procedural safeguards rather than a blanket exclusion from the law of rape. Finally, the paper situates the argument within the ongoing 2026 challenge before the Supreme Court concerning whether the exception can shield husbands from liability even where the alleged conduct causes grievous injury or death, and concludes that the exemption should be reconsidered through the constitutional principles of dignity, equality, privacy and bodily autonomy.