Make adultery, non-consensual gay sex crimes, says House panel

THE PARL PANEL BRUSHED ASIDE OBJECTIONS TO THE NAME OF THE BILL ON THE GROUNDS THAT IT WAS IN HINDI

- Neeraj Chauhan

The government should consider including a gender-neutral provision criminalising adultery and a clause that criminalises non-consensual sex between men, women or transpersons as well as acts of bestiality, a parliamentary committee reviewing a landmark bill that seeks to replace the colonial-era Indian Penal Code (IPC) is likely to recommend, people aware of developments said on Tuesday.

In its draft report, according to the people cited above, the parliamentary standing committee on home affairs is also likely to suggest that terms such as community service and life imprisonment are better defined. It also might brush aside objections to the name of the bill — the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) — while endorsing the need for an overhaul of India’s criminal justice system.

Once finalised, the report will be sent to the Union home ministry. It is not binding but has some persuasive value, especially because the government had voluntarily said the bill will be sent to the parliamentary panel — headed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Rajya Sabha member Brij Lal — for review.

The panel’s deliberations took up Section 497 of IPC, which criminalised adultery, and noted that the Supreme Court scrapped it in 2018, finding it unconstitutional and archaic. In the view of the panel, according to the people quoted above, the law — which punished a man who had consensual sexual intercourse with the wife of another man without the husband’s consent with up to five years in jail, a fine or both — only penalised the married man.

Hence, the draft report of the panel is likely to suggest that the provision be made gender neutral, said the people cited above. The committee was of the view that the institution of marriage is sacred in India and hence, it needed to be safeguarded, said the people cited above.