Image copyright Reuters Image caption Under the law the woman could not be punished as an abettor - the man was considered to be a seducer

India's top court has ruled adultery is no longer a crime, striking down a 158-year-old colonial-era law which it said treated women as male property.

Previously any man who had sex with a married woman, without the permission of her husband, had committed a crime.

A petitioner had challenged the law saying it was arbitrary and discriminated against men and women.

It is not clear how many men have been prosecuted under the law - there is no data available.

This is the second colonial-era law struck down by India's Supreme Court this month - it also overturned a 157-year-old law which effectively criminalised gay sex in India.

While reading out the judgement on adultery, Chief Justice Dipak Misra said that while it could be grounds for civil issues like divorce, "it cannot be a criminal offence".

Who challenged the law?

Last August, Joseph Shine, a 41-year-old Indian businessman living in Italy, petitioned the Supreme Court to strike down the law. He argued that it discriminated against men by only holding them liable for extra-marital relationships, while treating women like objects.

"Married women are not a special case for the purpose of prosecution for adultery. They are not in any way situated differently than men," his petition said.

The law, Mr Shine said, also "indirectly discriminates against women by holding an erroneous presumption that women are the property of men".

In his 45-page petition, Mr Shine liberally quotes from American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, women rights activist Mary Wollstonecraft and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on gender equality and the rights of women.

Image copyright EPA Image caption Previous pleas were dismissed by the court in the interests of "stability of marriages"

However, India's ruling BJP government had opposed the petition, insisting that adultery should remain a criminal offence.

"Diluting adultery laws will impact the sanctity of marriages. Making adultery legal will hurt marriage bonds," a government counsel told the court, adding that "Indian ethos gives paramount importance to the institution and sanctity of marriage".

What did the adultery law say?

The law dictated that the woman could not be punished as an abettor. Instead, the man was considered to be a seducer.

It also did not allow women to file a complaint against an adulterous husband.

A man accused of adultery could be sent to a prison for a maximum of five years, made to pay a fine, or both.

And although there is no information on actual convictions under the law, Kaleeswaram Raj, a lawyer for the petitioner, said the adultery law was "often misused" by husbands during matrimonial disputes such as divorce, or civil cases relating to wives receiving maintenance.

"Men would often file criminal complaints against suspected or imagined men who they would allege were having affairs with their wives. These charges could never be proved, but ended up smearing the reputations of their estranged or divorced partners," he told the BBC.

Interestingly, Indian folklore and epics are full of stories about extra-marital love. Most love poems in Sanskrit, according to scholar J Moussaief Masson, are "about illicit love".

But Manusmriti, an ancient Hindu text, says: "If men persist in seeking intimate contact with other men's wives, the king should brand them with punishments that inspire terror and banish them".

What did the judges say?

All five Supreme Court judges hearing the case said the law was archaic, arbitrary and unconstitutional.

"Husband is not the master of wife. Women should be treated with equality along with men," Chief Justice Misra said.

Judge Rohinton Nariman said that "ancient notions of man being perpetrator and woman being victim no longer hold good".

Justice DY Chandrachud said the law "perpetuates subordinate status of women, denies dignity, sexual autonomy, is based on gender stereotypes".

He said the law sought to "control sexuality of woman (and) hits the autonomy and dignity of woman".

Critics have called the law "staggeringly sexist", "'crudely anti-woman'", and "'violative of the right to equality'".

"The legal system should not regulate whom one sleeps with," wrote Rashmi Kalia, who teaches law.

The main concern, according to the respected journal Economic and Political Weekly, is "not whether the expectations of fidelity in a marriage are right or wrong, or whether adultery denotes sexual freedom."

"It is whether the state can and should monitor a relationship between adults that is too complex, sensitive and individual for it to be capable of doing in a just manner," the journal wrote in a recent editorial.

Where else is adultery a criminal offence?

Image copyright Mansi Thapliyal Image caption The latest challenge was made in view of the "changed social conditions"

Adultery is considered illegal in 21 American states, including New York, although surveys show that while most Americans disapprove of adultery, they don't think of it as a crime.

"The criminal statutes remain in force for largely symbolic reasons, and there isn't enough enforcement risk for anyone to incur the political costs of repealing them," Deborah Rhode, a professor of law at Stanford University and the author of Adultery: Infidelity and the Law told the BBC.

Adultery is prohibited in Sharia or Islamic Law, so it is a criminal offence in Islamic countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Somalia.

Taiwan punishes adultery by up to a year in prison and it is also deemed a crime in Indonesia. In fact, Indonesia is drafting laws that prohibit all consensual sex outside the institution of marriage.

In 2015, South Korea's Supreme Court struck down a similar law where a man could be sent to prison for two years or less for adultery. The court said the law violated self-determination and privacy.

More than 60 countries around the world had done away with laws that made adultery a crime, according to Indian lawyer Kaleeswaram Raj.

In the UK, adultery is not a criminal offence and like many other countries, one of the main reasons given for divorce.

Couples cannot use adultery as a ground for divorce if they lived together as a couple for six months after the infidelity was known about.

Have there been previous challenges to the law?

In 1954, the law was first challenged by a petitioner asking why women cannot be punished for the offence, and that such "exemption was discriminatory".

Image copyright Mansi Thapliyal Image caption Critics have called the law "violative of right to equality"

The Supreme Court rejected the plea.

Since then, the top court has rejected similar pleas, including the constitutional validity of the law, at least twice - 1985 and 1988.

"The stability of marriage is not an ideal to be scorned," a judge said in 1985.

A married woman had approached the court, demanding the right to file a complaint of adultery against her husband's unmarried lover. The court, rather patronisingly, described the plea as a "crusade by a woman against a woman".

It said the law was about punishing the "outsider" who "breaks into the matrimonial home" and "violates its sanctity".

Two different panels on law reforms in 1971 and 2003 recommended that women should also be prosecuted for the offence.

"The society abhors marital infidelity. Therefore there is no good reason for not meting out similar treatment to the wife who has sexual intercourse with a married man," the 2003 panel, led by a judge, said.

In 2011, the top court, hearing another plea, said the law was facing criticism for "showing a strong gender bias, it makes the position of a married woman almost as a property of her husband".

What has the reaction been to the latest ruling?

Many Indians were not even aware the law existed. However, after Thursday's ruling, people have been largely supportive of the verdict.

Others said the top court should now move to make marital rape a criminal offence:

But a few felt that the law should have been made gender neutral instead of being struck down:</s>The Supreme Court in India has struck down an “unconstitutional” colonial-era law making adultery a criminal offence, saying it makes women “chattel” of their husbands.

In the second such landmark ruling this month, India’s Supreme Court decriminalized the 158-year-old adultery offence as it treats the “husband like the master” of a woman, “offending” her dignity. It comes after the same court decriminalized gay sex earlier this month.

Penal code Section 497 gives husbands the right to prosecute other married men if they have a relationship with their wife without their “consent.” If the defendant is found guilty, he could be thrown in jail for up to five years, face a fine, or both.

Saying the archaic law allows husbands to “to use the woman as a chattel,” a five-judge bench remarked about the colonial-era legislation: “This is archaic law long outlived its purpose and does not square with constitutional morality,” the Hindustan Times reports.

READ MORE: India makes Muslim ‘triple talaq’ divorce punishable by up to 3yrs in jail

They added that where the law “falls foul of constitutional guarantee,” the court must intervene to strike it down even when the government fails to do so.

If you like this story, share it with a friend!</s>India’s Supreme Court has struck down a 158-year-old law that treated adultery in certain cases as a criminal offence punishable by up to five years in prison.

The decision is the latest involving India’s Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who has presided over a string of verdicts in recent weeks that grant more rights to women, gay couples and religious minorities, challenging deeply conservative Indian society as he prepares to retire from the bench next month.

Chief Justice Dipak Misra and the rest of the five-member court called the law, which did not allow a wife to prosecute an adulterous husband, unconstitutional and noted that a “husband is not the master of woman”.

Adultery can still be grounds for divorce in India, the verdict said, but a criminal penalty violated women’s protection to equal rights under the law.

The verdict was hailed by activists and left-of-centre members of India’s parliament.

“Excellent decision,” tweeted Sushmita Dev, a politician and president of the opposition Congress Party’s women’s wing.

She added that “a law that does not give women the right to sue her adulterer husband … is unequal treatment and militates against her status as an individual”.

Earlier this month, the Misra-led court also struck down a colonial-era law that made gay sex punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

The 1861 law, a relic of Victorian England that hung on long after the end of British colonialism, was “a breach of the rights of privacy and dignity”, the court ruled.

It added that “history owes an apology to the members of this community and their families, for the delay in providing redressal for the ignominy and ostracism that they have suffered through the centuries”.

On Thursday, the court also decided not to reconsider a 1994 decision that would have delayed proceedings in a case over the ownership of a site of a mosque that Hindu hardliners demolished in 1992.

The court’s recent pace of decisions speaks to another feature of Chief Justice Misra’s tenure: expediting cases in a country where they routinely take decades to resolve.

There are 33 million court cases pending in India, government figures show.

Chief Justice Misra steps down as the chief justice of India next week when he turns 65, the mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court justices in India.

His 13-month tenure as chief justice has won him accolades from advocates of disadvantaged groups but drawn unprecedented criticism from other members of the bench.

In January, the four most senior justices held a news conference in New Delhi against Chief Justice Misra, who as chief justice controls the court’s roster and decides who will take which cases, listing a litany of problems that they said afflicted the country’s highest court and risked undermining India’s democracy.

Chief Justice Misra met with the dissenting judges, who continued on the bench.</s>Women Are Not 'Chattel,' Says India's Supreme Court In Striking Down Adultery Law

India's Supreme Court has struck down a colonial-era law that made adultery illegal, calling it arbitrary and saying it is unconstitutional because it "treats a husband as the master."

Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code makes it a crime for a man to have intercourse with another man's wife "without the consent or connivance of that man."

The law gives a husband exclusive right to prosecute his wife's lover – and does not grant a wife power to do the same. It does not penalize the woman, nor any married man who has sex with an unmarried woman.

The 158-year-old law dates back to Victorian times, during British colonial rule of India. The penalty for adultery was up to five years in prison, or a fine, or both.

Noting that the law is singular in the penal code for treating men and women differently, Chief Justice Dipak Misra said "The adultery law is arbitrary and it offends the dignity of a woman."

He said adultery is grounds for divorce, but not jail time.

The five-judge court said the law gives a husband license "to use the woman as chattel."

"This is archaic law long outlived its purpose and does not square with constitutional morality," the bench said in separate, but concurring opinion to one issued by the chief justice.

The decision is the latest by an increasingly activist Indian Supreme Court that has done far more than the politicians in recent years to re-order sexual mores and advance gender equality in a deeply conservative, but rapidly modernizing society.

Misra, the chief justice, is retiring next week, and the court has been issuing rapid-fire judgments leading up to his departure. Many of the rulings are based on testimony heard earlier this year, but only released now.

Earlier this month, the court struck down a long-standing ban on gay sex. Last year, the justices outlawed the summary "triple talaq" divorce for Muslim men and in a country with more child brides than anywhere in the world, the high court ruled that sex with an underage wife constitutes rape.

The ruling to decriminalize adultery had been strongly opposed by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose center-right coalition is led by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP. Modi advocated amending the law to make it gender-neutral, while maintaining adultery as a criminal offense.

A female lawmaker from the opposition Congress party, Sushmita Dev, tweeted that the court had made an "excellent decision."

"A law that does not give women the right to sue her adulterer husband and can't be herself sued if she is in adultery is unequal treatment," she wrote.

The adultery case came about as a result of a petition by Joseph Shine, a 41-year-old Indian businessman living in Italy.

Shine's 45-page petition "liberally quotes from American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, women rights activist Mary Wollstonecraft and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on gender equality and rights of women," according to the BBC.

"Married women are not a special case for the purpose of prosecution for adultery. They are not in any way situated differently than men," Shine's petition said.</s>NEW DELHI — The chief justice of India’s Supreme Court has presided over a string of verdicts in recent weeks that grant more rights to women, gay couples and religious minorities, challenging deeply conservative Indian society as he prepares to retire from the bench next month.

In the latest decision Thursday, Chief Justice Dipak Misra and the rest of the five-member court struck down a 158-year-old law that treated adultery in certain cases as a criminal offense punishable by up to five years in prison.

The court called the law, which did not allow wives to prosecute adulterous husbands, unconstitutional and noted that a “husband is not the master of woman.” Adultery can still be grounds for divorce in India, the verdict said, but a criminal penalty violated women’s protection to equal rights under the law.

“Excellent decision,” tweeted Sushmita Dev, a lawmaker and president of the opposition Congress party’s women’s wing. She said “a law that does not give women the right to sue her adulterer husband ... is unequal treatment and militates against her status as an individual.”

The rights group Amnesty International India said the decision was “a progressive judgment” and the old law was a “remnant of a time when a woman was considered to be the property of her husband.”

The scrapped law allowed men to file charges against other men who had affairs with their wives. Women having affairs could not be prosecuted, but they also couldn’t file a complaint against cheating husbands.

Earlier this month, the Misra-led court also struck down a colonial-era law that made gay sex punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The 1861 law, a relic of Victorian England that hung on long after the end of British colonialism, was “a breach of the rights of privacy and dignity,” the court ruled. It added that “history owes an apology to the members of this community and their families, for the delay in providing redressal for the ignominy and ostracism that they have suffered through the centuries.”

The court’s recent pace of decisions speaks to another feature of Misra’s tenure: expediting cases in a country where they routinely take decades to resolve.

There are 33 million court cases pending in India, government figures show.

Ashok Sharma is an Associated Press writer.</s>New Delhi: The Supreme Court today delivered verdict with all the five judges concurring on a crucial 150-year-old adultery law that considers punishment only to a man and not a married woman for an affair by treating her as a victim and not as an abettor of the offence. “Adultery law arbitrary,” said the Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra.

Section 497 deprives women of dignity and that women are treated as property of her husband. The court said any provision treating women with inequality is not constitutional and it’s time to say that husband is not the master of woman. Adultery will remain a ground for divorce, the bench added.

The centre had, in its defence, claimed that the law should remain valid as it protects the sanctity of marriage. The petition filed against the law was done so on the premise that the law does not treat men and women equally.

A five-judge constitution bench, headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, had reserved its verdict in August. The hearing in the case by the bench, which also comprised justices R F Nariman, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Indu Malhotra, went on for six days and had begun on August 1.</s>The previous, colonial-era law provided punishments for men who had slept with married women without first obtaining permission from their husbands.

The highest court in India, the world’s most populated democracy, has struck down a marital law that many considered sexist and biased against wives in the nation.

The law known as Section 479 penalized extramarital sex between consenting parties, punishing any man who had sex with the wife of another man if he had not first received the husband’s permission to do so, according to CNN. Conversely, the colonial-era law did not provide any kind of reciprocity, as no punishment for women who had affairs with married men existed within the statute.

Furthermore, legal experts believed the law restricted the autonomy that women should be able to have over their own bodies, married or not. The court, in its ruling, explained that husbands could no longer hold this kind of power over their wives’ decisions.

“It’s time to say that (a) husband is not the master of (his) wife. Legal sovereignty of one sex over the other sex is wrong,” Chief Justice Dipak Misra read aloud from the judgment.

The decision by the court was unanimous, as all five justices agreed that the law was both unjust and unfair to women in marriages, giving husbands the authority to determine if they could have extramarital sex or not.

Jayna Kothari, executive director of the Center for Law and Policy Research in Bangalore, expressed how important the ruling truly was. “It is a big victory for women’s status and position within marriage and within families,” Kothari said.

India government lawyers, supported by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, argued in favor of keeping the law intact. Recognizing that the law treated wives unfairly, the government said they would change the law to add punishments for women who didn’t get permission from wives to have extramarital relationships with husbands, but the court rejected that suggestion.

“Section 497 destroys and deprives women of dignity and is destructive of women’s dignity, self-respect as it treats women as chattel,” the court’s decision stated.

This is the second ruling within the past month that the top court in India has ruled against a colonial-era law in that nation. Earlier in September, the court also struck down a law that criminalized gay sexual intercourse between consenting adults.

The court also ruled that, while no longer a criminal offense, adultery could remain a justification for divorce between a married couple, according to reporting from the Times of India. The court also recognized that adultery may not be the cause of an unhappy marriage, but rather that an unhappy marriage may result in adultery.</s>Sept. 27 (UPI) -- India's top court said Thursday a colonial-era law that criminalized adultery was unconstitutional and discriminatory in a landmark ruling hailed by women's rights groups.

The court ruled unanimously Thursday that the 158-year-old law "perpetuates the subordinate status of women, denies dignity and sexual autonomy, and is based on gender stereotypes," Al Jazeera reported.

The colonial-era law known as Section 497 criminalized consensual sexual relations between a man and a married woman without the consent of her husband.

"It's time to say that (a) husband is not the master of (his) wife," Chief Justice Dipak Misra read out from the judgment, CNN reported. "Legal sovereignty of one sex over the other sex is wrong."

Indian businessman Joseph Shine brought the matter to the court by filing a petition last year challenging Section 497's validity over gender bias since under the law, a husband could prosecute a man engaged in sexual relations with his wife, but a wife could not prosecute her husband for adultery.

The law had been supported by family rights groups and the Indian government stated in court months ago that decriminalizing adultery would erode "the sanctity of marriage and the fabric of society at large."

"It is a big victory for women's status and position within marriage and within families," Jayna Kothari, executive director of the Center for Law and Policy Research in Bangalore, said.

"The adultery offense was used really as a threat against women by their husbands," she said, adding that it was mainly used where marriages had already broken down.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court of India also scrapped another colonial-era law against same-sex relations in another landmark ruling.</s>The Supreme Court verdict declaring that adultery is not a crime has been widely welcomed by several lawyers and activists who said it was antiquated colonial era law that treated women as properties of their husbands.

A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra was unanimous in striking down Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code, holding it manifestly arbitrary, archaic and violative of the rights to equality and equal opportunity to women.

Senior Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan termed the verdict a fine judgement that did away with an "antiquated" law.

"Another fine judgement by the SC striking down the antiquated law in Sec 497 of Penal code, which treats women as property of husbands & criminalises adultery (only of man who sleeps with someone's wife). Adultery can be ground for divorce but not criminal," Mr Bhushan said on Twitter.

Congress parliamentarian and the president of women's wing of the party, Sushmita Dev, agreed with him.

"Excellent decision to de-criminalise adultery. Also a law that does not give women the right to sue her adulterer husband & can't be herself sued if she is in adultery is unequal treatment & militates against her status as an individual separate entity," she tweeted.

The National Commission of Women chief Rekha Sharma, too, welcomed the judgement and said it should have been removed long time ago.

"This is a law from the British era, although British had done away with it long back, we were still stuck with it," she said.

According to social activist Ranjana Kumari, "patriarchal control" over women was unacceptable.

"We welcome the judgement by the SC striking down the 158yr old law based on Victorian values, in Sec 497 of Penal code, which treats women as property of husbands & criminalises adultery. Patriarchal control over women's body unacceptable," she tweeted.

While adultery should not be a criminal offence, the bench held that adultery should continue to be treated as civil wrong, and can be grounds for dissolution of marriage or divorce. There can't be any social licence which destroys a home, Justice Misra said.

Section 497 of the 158-year-old law says, "Whoever has sexual intercourse with a person who is and whom he knows or has reason to believe to be the wife of another man, without the consent or connivance of that man, such sexual intercourse not amounting to the offence of rape, is guilty of the offence of adultery."

The offence of adultery entailed a maximum punishment of five years, or with fine, or both.</s>NEW DELHI (AP) — The chief justice of India’s Supreme Court has presided over a string of recent rulings that grant more rights to women, gay couples and religious minorities, challenging deeply conservative Indian society before he retires next month.

In the latest decision Thursday, Chief Justice Dipak Misra and the rest of the five-member court struck down a 158-year-old law that treated adultery in certain cases as a criminal offense punishable by up to five years in prison.

The court called the law, which did not allow wives to prosecute adulterous husbands, unconstitutional and noted that a “husband is not the master of woman.” Adultery can still be grounds for divorce in India, the verdict said, but a criminal penalty violated women’s protection to equal rights under the law.

The verdict was hailed by activists and left-of-center members of India’s Parliament.

“Excellent decision,” tweeted Sushmita Dev, a lawmaker and president of the opposition Congress party’s women’s wing. She said “a law that does not give women the right to sue her adulterer husband … is unequal treatment and militates against her status as an individual.”

Amnesty International India said the decision was “a progressive judgment” and the old law was a “remnant of a time when a woman was considered to be the property of her husband.”

The scrapped law allowed men to file charges against other men who had affairs with their wives. Women having affairs could not be prosecuted, but they also couldn’t file a complaint against cheating husbands.

Earlier this month, the Misra-led court also struck down a colonial-era law that made gay sex punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The 1861 law, a relic of Victorian England that hung on long after the end of British colonialism, was “a breach of the rights of privacy and dignity,” the court ruled. It added that “history owes an apology to the members of this community and their families, for the delay in providing redressal for the ignominy and ostracism that they have suffered through the centuries.”

On Thursday, the court also decided not to reconsider a 1994 decision that would have delayed proceedings in a case over the ownership of the site of a mosque that Hindu hard-liners demolished in 1992.

The court’s recent pace of decisions speaks to another feature of Misra’s tenure: expediting cases in a country where they routinely take decades to resolve.

There are 33 million court cases pending in India, government figures show.

Misra is stepping down as chief justice next week when he turns 65, the mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court judges.

He joined India’s highest court in 2011. His 13-month tenure as chief justice has won him accolades from advocates of disadvantaged groups but drawn unprecedented criticism from other members of the bench.

In January, the four most senior justices held a news conference against Misra, who as chief justice controls the court’s roster and decides who will take which cases, listing a litany of problems that they said afflicted the court and risked undermining India’s democracy. Misra met with the dissenting judges, who continued on the bench.
The Supreme Court of India strikes down a law criminalizing adultery as unconstitutional, stating it treated women as property of their husbands.