An India Today report citing people familiar with the developments, have said that the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs has formulated a draft report which recommends bringing back the Adultery law, and criminalising non-consensual sex between women, men, or transperson. 

The report also said that despite requests of Hindi and English names, the panel is likely to recommend retaining the ‘Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita’. 

The report citing people familiar with the developments also said the draft report also suggests reducing the punishment for conducting unauthorised protests or demonstrations from the current two years to a maximum of one year. Additionally, the committee proposes an increase in the punishment for cases of death due to negligence, from the current six months to five years.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs, headed by Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Brij Lal, is reviewing three bills — The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, and the Bharatiya Sakshya Bill, 2023–introduced in the parliament by Amit Shah on the last day of the Monsoon session. 

Section 377: Criminalising homosexuality

Section 377 of the British colonial penal code criminalized all sexual acts “against the order of nature”. The law was used to prosecute people engaging in oral and anal sex along with homosexual activity.

This law was struck down in 2018 by the Supreme Court of India. 

Notably, there was no provision for addressing non-consensual sex between “men, women, transperson, and acts of bestiality” after Section 377 was removed from the IPC.

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Section 497: Criminalising Adultery

Adultery was a criminal offence under Chapter XX of the Indian Penal Code until it was quashed by the Supreme Court of India on 27 September 2018 as unconstitutional. The law dated from 1860. 

Under Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code, which was the section dealing with adultery, a man who had consensual sexual intercourse with the wife of another man without that husband’s consent will be punished for this offence. 

The law ran into controversy because the concept of adultery targeted the act of sexual intercourse occurring between a married woman and a man other than her husband, in which case the man would be guilty whereas the wife was exempt from punishment. 

When a married man has sexual intercourse with an unmarried woman, no party was punishable; while if a married man had sexual intercourse with a married woman other than his wife, the married man’s crime was against the husband of that married woman, not against the man’s own wife. 

Adultery was only prosecutable upon the complaint of the aggrieved husband (or in exceptional circumstances by a party whom the husband had entrusted with the care of his wife).

The Supreme Court had noted that the law “treats a husband as the sole master”, and therefore struck down the same on basis of unconstitutionality. 

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Updated: 27 Oct 2023, 10:16 PM IST