Larger bench of SC to check on adultery law validity

New Delhi: A five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court will reconsider the legal validity of the 157-year-old adultery law in the IPC punishing only man and not a married woman for adultery by treating her as a victim and not an abettor of crime.

A three-judge bench of CJI Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Kanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud on Friday referred the writ petition filed by an activist Joseph Shine, challenging the constitutional validity of Section 497 of the IPC, for reconsideration by a Constitution Bench.

Section 497 IPC 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 and shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to five years, or with fine, or with both. In such case the wife shall not be punishable as an abettor.”

After hearing senior counsel Kaleeswaram Raj, the bench in a brief order said that in 1954 a four-judge Bench and in 1985 a three-judge bench had upheld the validity of Section 497 IPC stating that this provision was not discriminatory to man.