A challenge to the law has been winding its way through the country’s courtrooms, with the Delhi High Court delivering a split verdict on the issue in 2022, prompting lawyers to file an appeal in the country’s Supreme Court that is still waiting to be heard.
According to the Madhya Pradesh High Court order, the woman told police her husband came to her house in 2019, soon after they were married, and committed “unnatural sex,” under Section 377 of India’s penal code.
The offense includes non-consensual “carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal,” and was historically used to prosecute same sex couples who engaged in consensual sex, before the Supreme Court
decriminalized homosexuality in 2018
According to court documents, the woman alleged the act happened “on multiple occasions,” and that her husband had threatened to divorce her if she told anyone about it. She finally came forward after telling her mother, who encouraged her to file a complaint in 2022, the court heard.