Marital Rape in India: A Crime Without a Name in Law

Every sixteen minutes, a woman in India is raped. But if the rapist is her husband, the law looks away. Behind closed doors, countless women are forced into silence — their bruises hidden, their pain normalised, and their violation denied a name. This silence has a name too: marital rape. And it remains one of the darkest stains on India’s promise of gender justice. Statistics tell us the scale. Stories tell us the scars. And both reveal the silence the law continues to enforce. “I stopped screaming after a while. It made no difference. In my own house, in my own bed, I became a prisoner. As if my marriage certificate was also a license for him to hurt me every night.†— Anonymous survivor, Delhi, 2019. In the eyes of the Indian law, what she endured was not rape. Exception 2 of Section 375 Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860(n Presently Section 63 of. Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023) still shields men from accountability. What began as a colonial relic has today become a constitutional contradiction — a nation that promises equality, yet denies it within the bedroom.