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Days before Article 370 move, SC nixed J-K adultery law
The order in the case was released on Wednesday.
Days before the Centre’s move to nullify the special status accorded to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, the Supreme Court ruled that changes introduced in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) through a judicial order would also be applicable to the Ranbir Penal Code (RPC), which existed in the former state that has now been broken up into two Union Territories.
Last Friday, a bench led by Justice RF Nariman declared section 497 (dealing with adultery) of RPC unconstitutional, and set free an army officer of adultery charges on the grounds that the corresponding section under IPC had been decriminalised and declared a matrimonial offence by the top court last September.
The order in the case was released on Wednesday.
The Army argued in the court that the officer was not charged under Section 497 of the IPC but Section 497 of RPC, which the verdict had not dealt with in its 2018 judgement. It also contended that the sections dealing with the offence of adultery under the two codes were worded differently -- under the IPC the woman in the adulterous relationship was not punished, but under the RPC she was also punished as an abettor.
The bench disagreed with the Army’s explanation, and said once SC has decriminalised section 497 of the IPC, the same would extend to the RPC too.
“Given our judgment in Joseph Shine v. Union of India, the pari materia provision contained in Section 497 of the Ranbir Penal Code be also declared as violative of Part III of the Constitution of India,” the bench said while allowing the officer’s plea challenging the disciplinary proceedings against him after a retired army officer lodged a complaint in 2015 accusing him of having an adulterous relationship with his wife. As the officer was posted in Kashmir at the time of the alleged incident, he was charged under the RPC.
“The entire section is declared to be unconstitutional. The fact that this statement of law in the Ranbir Penal Code is the exact opposite of the statement of law, so far as the wife is concerned, of that contained in the Indian Penal Code, 1860, is of no consequence,” the bench said.
RPC, made on the lines of the IPC but with some differences, came into force in Jammu and Kashmir in 1932. It was named after Maharaja Ranbir Singh, who ruled the state at the time.
