The Persistence Of Patriarchy - A Critical Analysis Of The Marital Rape Exception In Section 63 Of The BNS

Author: LawSphereX

Category: Criminal Law

Published: 2026-08-23T21:26:44.393318+00:00

Updated: 2026-08-26T17:05:30.806+00:00

THE PERSISTENCE OF PATRIARCHY: A CRITICAL

ANALYSIS OF THE MARITAL RAPE EXCEPTION IN

SECTION 63 OF THE BNS

Avika Vats, IILM University Paras Yadav, IILM University

ABSTRACT

One concerning relic of patriarchal law is the Marital Rape Exception found in Section 63 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. The clause undermines married women's fundamental dignity by treating marital status as a shield against accountability and absolving a husband of criminal responsibility for engaging in non-consensual sexual relations with his spouse. This paper argues that the exception is incompatible with the equality, nondiscrimination, and personal liberty guaranteed by Articles 14, 15, and 21 of the Constitution. It gives institutional preservation precedence over individual rights and denies women agency over their own bodies. The study investigates how the exception is based on antiquated ideas like implied consent and marital entitlement using a critical analytical approach that blends legal reasoning, sociocultural context, and feminist theory.

According to the analysis, the division made between married and single women is illogical and does not pass the reasonableness and proportionality tests of the Constitution. Therefore, the continuation of this exception is a moral failing as well as a constitutional one. The purpose of the paper is to examine the socio-legal ramifications of the Marital Rape Exclusion, critically evaluate the constitutional conflicts it contains, and trace the historical foundations of marital immunity. Additionally, it uses international and comparative viewpoints to show how international legal systems have eliminated these exceptions. To ensure gender neutrality and uphold justice within India's criminal law framework, the study concludes that urgent judicial and legislative reform is needed.

Introduction: Patriarchy, Law, and the Marital Exception A stark reality opens this study: recent national surveys1 report that roughly one-third of evermarried women in India have experienced physical, sexual, or emotional violence at the hands of their husbands. This is not an abstract statistic. It is a measure of how unsafe many homes remain and of how legal rules interact with social power to shape everyday life. This paper contends that the Marital Rape Exception in Section 632 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita is a legally sanctioned expression of patriarchal ideology. The exception3 treats marital status as a shield that limits criminal accountability for sexual violence, thereby undermining the dignity and bodily autonomy of the wife.

Crucially, the statutory silence on criminal liability is compounded by the doctrinal silence of Indian matrimonial law, specifically the operation of the defence of Condonation4. The MRE embeds within criminal law a fiction that a wife’s consent to sexual intercourse is irrevocably given by the very fact of marriage. This paper challenges this combined legal fiction as both intellectually unsound and profoundly socially harmful. To frame the argument, the paper draws on feminist legal theory and socio-legal evidence. Feminist legal theory treats law not as a neutral instrument but as a site where social hierarchies are reproduced or contested. From that perspective, the marital exception is not an accidental gap. It is the outcome of legal traditions that have historically subordinated the married woman’s legal personhood to male authority.

The subsequent analysis traces the historical origins of the Marital Rape Exception. This paper argues that the MRE, denies women redress in criminal and sphere of law, thereby creating a "trap" that institutionalises male control over intimate relationships. Historical and Philosophical Roots of Marital Immunity: Hale’s Dictum and Coverture To understand the marital exception today, it is necessary to trace its genealogy. The view that a wife’s marriage amounts to perpetual consent to intercourse is traceable to a seventeenthcentury common law authority who wrote that by marriage, a wife gives herself in this respect to her husband and cannot retract that consent. That dictum became an influential justification 1 Int’l Inst. for Population Scis. & ICF, National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), India, 2019–21 (2021).

2 Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, No. 45 of 2023, § 63 (India).

3 Indian Penal Code, 1860, § 375 (Exception 2) (India).

4 Dr. N.G. Dastane v. S. Dastane, A.I.R. 1975 S.C. 1534; (1975) 2 S.C.C. 326 (India).

for treating sexual coercion within marriage as outside the reach of criminal law. Closely linked to that dictum is the doctrine of coverture. Under coverture, the married woman’s separate legal personhood was substantially diminished; the law treated husband and wife as a single legal entity represented by the husband and denied the wife independent capacity in many civil matters. Over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, jurisdictions began to dismantle coverture through statutory reforms such as married women’s property legislation and other measures that recognised women as distinct legal actors. Those reforms established that marriage need not erase a woman’s legal subjectivity in property or contract law. The persistence of a marital immunity for sexual violence, therefore, appears inconsistent with the broader arc of legal modernisation.

Property and civil rights once withheld from married women have been restored by statute and judicial reform. Yet the idea that marriage supplies an irrevocable sexual license has endured in some criminal statutes. Where other jurisdictions confronted this inconsistency directly and moved to abolish the fiction, the rationale for preserving it weakened. In England, for example, the highest court decisively rejected the marital immunity and described the notion of irrevocable consent as an anachronistic myth incompatible with contemporary values and the protection of individual autonomy. That judgment illustrates how a legal system can correct a historical error by aligning criminal law with modern understandings of consent and dignity.

It also marks an important turning point and provides a persuasive example of legal modernisation that squarely rejects the remnants of coverture in criminal law. It is important to see this history not as mere antiquarianism but as living doctrine. The marital fiction did not vanish because it was merely old; it persisted because law reproduces social relations. Feminist legal theory helps explain the mechanism. 5 Where social norms value male sexual prerogative and prioritise marital stability, the law may develop doctrines that institutionalise those priorities. This institutionalisation that manifests through the MRE (criminal immunity) creates a set of legal texts that reflect power as much as principle.

The Marital Rape Exception: Criminal Law's Silence The text of the penal provision at issue states that sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife who is not under eighteen years of age is not rape. The provision thereby 5 Joan McGregor, Is It Rape? The Concept of Consent in Sexual Offences, 5 Buff. Crim. L. Rev. 43 (2001).

creates an exception to the general definition of rape based solely on the marital relationship. The statutory language treats marital status as an exculpatory circumstance rather than as an aggravating or irrelevant factor. The result is that the law withholds the state’s criminal protection from a significant category of sexual violence. The social harm of that legal position is plain. An exception of this kind legitimises violence within the domestic sphere by signalling that the law views sexual coercion in marriage through a different lens than similar conduct outside marriage. That legal signal has real consequences for reporting, for policing, and for the psychological safety of victims.

Empirical studies on intimate partner violence show that sexual violence within marriage produces severe physical and mental health harms and that underreporting is common because of shame, fear, and social pressure. By making marital status a ground for immunity, the law effectively compounds those barriers. The exception is also anomalous within criminal doctrine. Criminal law generally does not treat a close relationship between offender and victim as a defence. If anything, relationships can aggravate culpability because of the trust and power imbalance they create. The marital exception thus reverses the usual logic: instead of offering greater protection to those more vulnerable, it withdraws protection precisely where trust and dependency are strongest. Finally, India’s international commitments add an extra layer of dissonance.

India is a party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and has obligations to eliminate violence against women without discrimination based on marital status6. The continued existence of a marital exception is difficult to reconcile with the object and purpose of that convention. This paper, therefore, treats the exception not only as a domestic anomaly but as a point of tension with India’s international human rights obligations. Constitutional Violation I: The Marital Rape Exception and the Right to Equality under Article 14 The classification drawn by the Marital Rape Exception separates married women from unmarried women for criminal protection against sexual violence. This separates rape victims from marital rape victims. The effect is a legal structure that denies relief in criminal sphere

6 World Health Organization, Global and Regional Estimates of Violence against Women: Prevalence and

Health Effects of Intimate Partner Violence and Non-Partner Sexual Violence (Oct. 2013).

based on the arbitrary criterion of marital status. The constitutional test for classification under Article 147 proceeds in two linked steps. First, the court asks whether criminalise classification is founded upon an intelligible differentia that distinguishes those included from those excluded. Second, the court asks whether that intelligible differentia bears a rational nexus8 to the object sought to be achieved by the law. Both limbs are concerned with reasoned state action and with preventing arbitrary distinctions. The class legislation of married and unmarried women herein is based only on marital status and not on any characteristic that is relevant to whether an act is consensual or violent. Marital status does not make an act more or less injurious to bodily integrity. Consequently, the classification fails the requirement of intelligible differentia.

The second limb is equally decisive. The object of rape law is to protect bodily integrity, personal security and human dignity. There is no plausible connection between that object and a rule that immunises nonconsensual sexual intercourse within marriage. Invoking the preservation of the marital institution does not provide a reasoned justification for withdrawing criminal sanction from acts that cause physical and psychological harm. In short, the classification lacks a rational nexus with the statutory purpose and is therefore constitutionally infirm. The principles established in E. P. Royappa v. State of Tamil Nadu9 and Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India10 compel the conclusion that a statutory rule which withdraws protection from a class of victims without any reasonable justification must be struck down.

When the MRE is viewed in detail, it becomes clear that the law arbitrarily11 limits the victim’s access to both state protection and civil redress, failing the substantive reasonableness test entirely. The recent decision in Shayara Bano v. Union of India12 shows the Court’s willingness to invalidate long-standing practices that impose severe disadvantage on women when those practices are manifestly arbitrary. The Marital Rape Exception occupies the same constitutional space as the practice invalidated in the above-mentioned case. It perpetuates a legal fiction

7 India Const. art. 14.

8 State of West Bengal v. Anwar Ali Sarkar, (1952) 1 S.C.R. 284, A.I.R. 1952 S.C. 75 (India).

9 E.P. Royappa v. State of Tamil Nadu, A.I.R. 1974 S.C. 555; (1974) 4 S.C.C. 3 (India).

10 Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, A.I.R. 1978 S.C. 597; (1978) 1 S.C.C. 248 (India).

11 Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India, (2017) 10 S.C.C. 1; A.I.R. 2017 S.C. 4161 (India). 12 Shayara Bano v. Union of India & Ors., Writ Petn. (C) No. 118 of 2016, Judgment (Aug. 22, 2017); A.I.R.

2017 S.C. 4609 (India).

rooted in patriarchal assumptions and therefore cannot survive the conditions under Article 14.13 Constitutional Violation II: The Marital Rape Exception and Non-Discrimination under Article 15 and Related Autonomy Interests Article 1514 of the Constitution prohibits discrimination on the grounds of sex and allows the State to make special provisions for women and children for their advancement. The key question under Article 1515 is whether a law that appears neutral on its face produces discriminatory effects or operates to the disadvantage of a protected class. The Marital Rape Exception, though framed as a relationship-based rule, disproportionately affects women and therefore produces sex-based discrimination in practice. A statutory exemption that denies married women criminal protection from sexual violence

cannot be reconciled with the protective intent of Article 15(3)16. That clause permits remedial measures targeted at women’s needs. It does not permit measures that make women more vulnerable. The exception in effect converts a constitutional safeguard designed to redress disadvantage into a license to perpetuate it. The reasoning in the case of C. B. Muthamma v. Union of India17 is instructive. In that case, the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India rejected official rules that treated married women as secondclass for administrative purposes and affirmed that marriage may not be used as a ground for denying a woman’s fundamental rights. The logic of this case supports the contention that marital status cannot be a legitimate basis for removing constitutional protections. The case of Vishaka v.

State of Rajasthan18 demonstrates how the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India has recognised gender-based violence as an affront to Articles 14, 15 and 21. In this case, the Court fashioned protective obligations in the absence of statutory rules, treating sexual harassment as a violation of equality and dignity. Hence, the approach in this case entirely falls in contradiction to the statutory shortcomings of the exception of gender-based violence. The Marital Rape Exception is therefore incompatible with the constitutional imperative to protect

13 India Const. art. 14.

14 India Const. art. 15.

15 India Const. art. 15.

16 India Const. art. 15(3).

17 C.B. Muthamma v. Union of India, A.I.R. 1979 S.C. 1868; (1979) 4 S.C.C. 260 (India).

18 Vishaka & Ors. v. State of Rajasthan & Ors., (1997) 6 S.C.C. 241 (India).

women from practices that undermine their equality. Beyond Article 15, the MRE impairs decisional autonomy, which is part of the broader rights ecosystem tied to Article 2119. The right to make intimate personal choices, including the right to refuse sexual intimacy, is anchored in the constitutional scheme. When a statute presumes consent for married women, it deprives them of the capacity to exercise meaningful personal choice. The legal failure to criminalise the act, forces a married woman into an impossible choice that impairs her decisional autonomy: either endure sexual violence in silence or face the risk of forfeiting her legal ground for divorce by maintaining cohabitation due to socioeconomic dependence. This is a denial of liberty and dignity that aggravates the discriminatory effect of the exception.

Constitutional Violation III: The Marital Rape Exception and Bodily Autonomy under Article 21 Article 2120 protects life and personal liberty in a recognisable sense. The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence has repeatedly read within Article 2121 the protections of privacy, bodily integrity and decisional autonomy. Those protections form the core of what it means to live with dignity. A law that treats a wife’s consent as irrevocable at the moment of marriage strikes at the heart

of these protections. The Marital Rape Exception rests on an archaic legal fiction often traced to Sir Matthew Hale’s dictum, which stated that by marriage, a woman gives herself in this respect to her husband. The institutionalised consent has been repudiated in modern thinking about sexual autonomy. Consent Analysis is an intentional and revocable state of mind. It cannot be permanently surrendered by a prior event, even if that event is a marriage ceremony. The constitutional contradiction is that the law denies bodily autonomy (MRE). The doctrine works to deny that 'Consent is a present and revocable state of mind' by trapping the victim between bodily harm and loss of civil redress. The principles in the case of Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India22 are directly relevant. In this case, the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India recognised privacy as fundamental

19 India Const. art. 21.

20 India Const. art. 21.

21 India Const. art. 21.

22 Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India, (2017) 10 S.C.C. 1; A.I.R. 2017 S.C. 4161 (India).

and connected privacy to decisional autonomy and bodily integrity. Similarly, in Suchita Srivastava v. Chandigarh Administration23, the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India recognised reproductive and sexual autonomy as integral to the right to life and personal liberty. Those holdings establish that choices concerning one’s body are constitutionally protected and that state action must respect the autonomy of the person. The proportionality framework that flows from the above precedents requires that any limitation on core liberties be lawful, pursue a legitimate aim and be narrowly tailored. While preserving the institution of marriage is a legitimate interest, immunising an entire category of violent conduct is neither necessary nor proportionate.

Immunising an entire category of violent conduct (MRE) and then placing a doctrinal defence that disproportionately punishes the victim for her socio-economic dependency is neither necessary nor narrowly tailored to the legitimate aim of preserving marriage. The dual doctrines create a limitation on liberty that is manifestly disproportionate. Empirical evidence reinforces the constitutional argument. National surveys indicate that a substantial proportion of ever-married women experience spousal violence, including sexual coercion, and that such violence has serious mental and physical health consequences. A statutory exemption that removes criminal remedies in precisely the contexts where violence concentrates undermine the practical enforceability of Article 21. 24 Bodily autonomy must be effective and enforceable. Where it is not, constitutional guarantees are hollow.

International Consensus and Comparative Jurisprudence India’s retention of the Marital Rape Exception places it at odds with prevailing international human rights standards and comparative legal trends. 25 The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women26 requires state parties to eliminate discrimination and to modify cultural practices that perpetuate inequality. The CEDAW Committee’s General Recommendation No. 3527 clarifies that failure to criminalise marital rape breaches the state’s duty to exercise due diligence in preventing, investigating and punishing gender-based

23 Suchita Srivastava & Anr. v. Chandigarh Administration & Ors., (2009) 9 S.C.C. 1 (India).

24 India Const. art. 21.

25 Poonam Dhanda, Marital Rape and International Human Rights Law, 37 Delhi L. Rev. 67 (2015).

26 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Dec. 18, 1979, 1249 U.N.T.S. 13.

27 CEDAW Comm., General Recommendation No. 35, CEDAW/C/GC/35 (July 26, 2017).

violence. 28 Comparative jurisprudence offers persuasive guidance. In R v R, the House of Lords in the United Kingdom formally rejected the marital rape immunity and called the doctrine of irrevocable consent an anachronistic and offensive fiction. That decision signalled a decisive shift in criminal law, affirming that marriage does not negate personal autonomy or justify sexual violence. Many other jurisdictions have followed a similar course. Countries such as Nepal and South Africa29 have removed marital exemptions and now treat non-consensual intercourse within marriage as criminal. Over 150 countries worldwide recognise that consent in marriage is no less essential than consent outside it. This global movement underscores that criminalising marital rape is not an exotic reform but a mainstream human rights standard.

By retaining the MRE, India permits a scenario where a patriarchal criminal law doctrine (MRE) to deny the victim both criminal prosecution and civil recourse, isolating its legal system from contemporary understandings of justice. India’s obligation under international law and its constitutional commitment to equality and dignity require that domestic law evolve in the same direction. Retaining the exception isolates the domestic legal order from contemporary understandings of human rights and leaves a class of victims without access to criminal redress. Reforming the law to remove the marital exception will align India’s criminal justice framework with international norms and will make meaningful constitutional protections available to all women regardless of marital status.

The Socio-Legal Implications: Perpetuating Violence and the Institutionalisation of Male Control The empirical reality frames the legal question. The National Family Health Survey 2019-21 reports that roughly thirty per cent of ever-married women in India have experienced spousal violence. This figure captures a wide range of harms and highlights that intimate partner violence is not rare or marginal but a substantial public health and human rights problem. The persistence of such violence within the home must be read alongside the law that governs intimate relations if we are to understand the social effects of statutory exemptions. 28 World Health Org. , Global and Regional Estimates of Violence against Women: Prevalence and Health Effects of Intimate Partner Violence and Non-Partner Sexual Violence (2013).

29 Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act, 2007, Act No. 32 of 2007 (S. Afr. ).

Sexual violence within marriage has demonstrable health and psychological effects. International health authorities note that women who experience physical or sexual partner violence face increased risk of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, unintended pregnancy, pregnancy-related complications, and chronic mental health problems such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety. These harms are not incidental; they produce long-term physical and psychological vulnerability that reverberates through families and communities. A legal rule that withholds criminal accountability in the context where such harms are concentrated, therefore compounds the risk to survivors and to public health. The statutory inconsistency is stark. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act

200530 defines domestic violence to include sexual abuse and empowers civil remedies,

protection orders and reliefs aimed at preventing and remedying harm within the household. Yet the marital rape exception in the penal code removes criminal accountability for sexual violence by a husband against his adult wife. This creates a doctrinal contradiction: civil law recognises sexual abuse in the domestic sphere and promises protection, while criminal law withholds the criminal sanction that would effectuate the protective mandate. The result is legal incoherence that undermines the protective purpose of both the civil statute and criminal law. At the doctrinal level, this contradiction can be described as a problem of internal inconsistency within the statutory corpus. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act identifies sexual abuse as a form of domestic violence and builds a regime for redress.

The penal exception treats the same conduct as outside the reach of criminal law. The divergence cannot be justified as a matter of legal technique. It operates to normalise male control by effectively treating the wife’s body as a site of marital privilege rather than an individual domain of sovereignty. Sociological theory helps explain why the exception matters beyond legal texts. The doctrine of familial privacy has been used historically to shield the domestic sphere from state intervention. Yet constitutional rights are not hollow when exercised behind closed doors. The state’s duty to protect life and liberty under Article 2131 demands that rights penetrate the threshold of the home wherever harm occurs. When privacy arguments are deployed to justify immunity for sexual violence, they mask a substantive abdication of the state’s protective responsibilities.

The correct balance recognises that family autonomy cannot be an instrument

30 The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, Act No. 43 of 2005 (India).

31 India Const. art. 21.

for tolerating grave human rights violations. Instead, the state must intervene to secure the safety, health and dignity of individuals, especially where power asymmetries and dependency magnify risk. In sum, the marital rape exception does not protect marriage. On the contrary, it legalises a form of abuse that produces chronic trauma, reproductive harms and mental health disorders and that deepens vulnerability to infectious disease. The legal and social architecture together institutionalise male control rather than protect the integrity of familial life. The Road Ahead: Analysing the Split Verdict and the Need for Supreme Court Intervention The challenge in RIT Foundation v. Union of India32 was decided by the Hon’ble High Court of Delhi in a split verdict. One judgment held the Marital Rape Exception unconstitutional; the other sustained it.

The division leaves the central constitutional question unresolved at the national level. The abolitionist position emphasises bodily autonomy and dignity under Article 2133 and treats the marital classification as arbitrary under Article 14. 34 The conservative position relies on deference to legislative classification and on the view that preserving the institution of marriage can justify differential treatment. The disagreement is doctrinally significant and affects the uniformity of law and enforcement across jurisdictions. Given the split, prompt adjudication by the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India is necessary. A conclusive ruling will provide a single authoritative standard for police, prosecutors and courts, resolve the doctrinal inconsistency between criminal protection regimes, and ensure that constitutional guarantees are applied uniformly to all women.

Furthermore, the Court must seize this opportunity to decisively clarify that any form of sexual violence within a marriage constitutes as cruelty. The decision in Independent Thought v. Union of India,35 in which the Hon’ble Supreme Court struck down the marital exemption insofar as it applied to minor wives, is a relevant precedent. 32 RIT Foundation & Ors. v. Union of India & Ors. , W. P. (C) Nos. 284/2015, etc. , Delhi High Court (Div. Bench), Manupatra/Neutral Cit. : 2022:DHC:1825 (Decided May 11, 2022).

33 India Const. art. 21.

34 India Const. art. 14.

35 Independent Thought v. Union of India & Anr., Writ Petn. (C) No. 382 of 2013 (J), Judgment (Oct. 11, 2017); A.I.R. 2017 S.C. 4904 (India).

It illustrates the Court’s willingness to correct statutory provisions that inflict grave harm and supports the proposition that the Supreme Court is the appropriate forum to settle the full constitutional question in respect of adult wives. Conclusion and Recommendations: Law Reform for Gender Neutrality and Justice The Marital Rape Exception in Section 63 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita36 sits in direct contradiction with Articles 14, 15 and 2137 of the Constitution. It rests on anachronistic assumptions traceable to Hale’s dictum38 that marriage implies permanent consent and that marital status can diminish a person’s right to bodily autonomy. Together these rules close off criminal pathways for many survivors, leaving them without meaningful remedies and undermining the protective aim of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005.

39 Viewed against basic principles of equality, dignity and personal liberty, the distinction between sexual violence inside and outside marriage is arbitrary and indefensible: the wrong done to a person does not change because of marital status. Legal reform must therefore be both doctrinal and practical. First, any provision that treats marital status as a defence to criminal liability should be removed; Exception 2 to Section 6340 and any cognate clauses must be repealed or read down so that the criminal law treats nonconsensual sex as an offence regardless of the relationship between the parties. The statutory definition of sexual assault should be relationship neutral and anchored in the absence of freely given consent, with clear language that consent is continuous and may be withdrawn at any time.

Second, a binding constitutional ruling from the Supreme Court would settle uncertainty and provide a uniform standard for lower courts, police and administrative agencies to follow. Reform on paper must be matched by institutional change. Police, prosecutors and judges should receive mandatory, trauma informed training to reduce secondary victimisation and to ensure investigations, evidence collection and courtroom procedures are survivor centred. State

36 Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, No. 45 of 2023, § 63 (India).

37 Constitution of India, arts. 14, 15, 21.

38 Sir Matthew Hale, The History of the Pleas of the Crown (17th c. ed.; cite modern ed. as used) (for Hale’s dictum).

39 The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, Act No. 43 of 2005 (India).

40 Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, No. 45 of 2023, § 63 (India).

and civil society should expand accessible medical and forensic services, legal aid, and mental health support so that survivors can pursue remedies without facing prohibitive barriers. Public education campaigns are needed to challenge myths about marital consent and to signal that marriage does not extinguish bodily autonomy. Finally, data collection and monitoring mechanisms should track the implementation and impact of reforms so that law reform translates into real protection. Restoring meaningful avenues for redress is both a legal necessity and a moral imperative; until the law treats non-consensual sex within marriage as a wrong deserving of remedy, constitutional commitments to equality and dignity remain incomplete.