His entry into the house late night scared her. Not just she, her children too left the room as soon as they saw him. For her, nights meant only pain.
“The scars all over my body narrate how much pain I underwent daily. I keep hearing about rapes every day. But I couldn’t even raise my voice because my culprit was my husband,” says the 42-year-old mother of five.
For her, rape was a daily feature. Her eyeswell up with tears as she recounts, “Not just once, he would torture me all through the night. It was an everyday affair. I had two miscarriages because of his animal instincts.”
Marital rape is very common. But it hardly comes to light. “Majority of women who undergo marital rape feel shy. They don’t gather courage to speak out against their husbands. And so many of such crimes remain confined within bedrooms,” says Madhu Garg, a social activist.
{{/usCountry}}Marital rape is very common. But it hardly comes to light. “Majority of women who undergo marital rape feel shy. They don’t gather courage to speak out against their husbands. And so many of such crimes remain confined within bedrooms,” says Madhu Garg, a social activist.
{{/usCountry}}Those working for the rights of women feel that women who are subjected to domestic violence are mostly the ones who are also sexually abused by their partners. “Marital rape comes packaged with domestic violence. But women are not open about it. They talk about physical torture but not the sexual torture their husbands give them,” says Garg.
“Women somehow consider it as their fate. They surrender themselves to their husbands. Women also feel that their consent doesn’t matter when it comes to sexual relationship with the partner,” she says.
Marital rape is also very common with minor girls. “A number of minor girls who get married to adults often complain of sexual abuse. In fact, such marriages only mean sexual and physical assault,” says Shachi Singh, who works for the rights of children.
Despite being a common occurrence, surprisingly marital rape is not recognised as an offence in India. The definition of rape under the Indian penal Code(IPC) clearly says, “Sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under fifteen years of age, is not rape.”
Renu Mishra, a lawyer,says, “The worst thing is that marital rape is not recognised as a crime in India. There is a civil law which says marital that rape is a sexual violence under the Domestic Violence Act. Only protection and compensation are allowed to the victim in such cases and nothing else is done.”