Adultery: Sec 497 and Supreme Court Judgement Explained
Of late, Supreme court has delivered momentous judgements based on the bedrock of Individual liberty and freedom. The recent one is the Adultery judgement. The question before the court was whether sec 497 of IPC stands the test of constitutional morality or not. A plain reading of the sec 497 gives a sense of gross gender discrimination and outright breach of article 14 of the constitution. Sec 497 as it stood before this judgement was: Adultery.—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. To understand what Sec 497 meant let's refer to below i...