SC says penal provision on adultery violative of right to equality

The Supreme Court on Thursday said matrimonial sanctity is an issue but the penal provision on adultery is apparently violative of the right to equality under the Constitution as it treats married men and married women differently.

A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, which is hearing a petition challenging the constitutional validity of Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code, was also critical of a part of the provision stating that no offence of adultery is made out if a married woman enters into a sexual relationship with a married man with the consent of her husband.

Section 497 of the 158-year-old 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."