Former Chief Justice of India UU Lalit, during a Supreme Court Bar Association lecture on “BNS 2023 and IPC 1860: Continuity, Change and Challenges,” said male victims remain remediless, as BNS missed the chance to make rape laws gender neutral.
Former Chief Justice of India UU Lalit delivered a lecture organized by the Supreme Court Bar Association titled “BNS 2023 and IPC 1860: Continuity, Change and Challenges.”
In his address, Justice Lalit emphasized the gender neutrality of laws concerning sexual assault, highlighting that the new legislation has overlooked a significant opportunity to protect adult male victims of sexual assault following the repeal of Section 377 of the IPC.
He recalled that after the notorious 2012 Nirbhaya case, the Justice JS Verma Committee recommended updates to Section 375 IPC, which led to a February 2013 ordinance making the provision gender-neutral, thus including male victims.
Justice Lalit noted the complete removal of Section 377 IPC, which criminalized unnatural sexual intercourse, including bestiality.
He raised a critical point,
“Now, what if the one adult is actually sort of subjected to it forcibly and without his consent?…So therefore you have not only lost that opportunity of making it gender neutral, which the ordinance had thought of, but you have also dropped 377, which means that if a man without his consent is subjected to that kind of offence, then today where is the window to ventilate the grievance? There is none. And that to my mind is completely an incorrect idea.”
He further stated,
“We have not only thrown the bathwater, we have also thrown the baby as well. So therefore we have lost the opportunity and made it completely a vacant idea where there is no grievance can be ventilated by a person who is a victim of that kind of crime.”
Justice Lalit also pointed out that while Section 366A of the IPC criminalized the procurement of a “minor girl” for prostitution or related activities lacking gender neutrality Section 96 of BNS adopts the term “procuring a child,” which encompasses male children as well.
He welcomed this change, along with the retention of gender-neutral language in the provisions corresponding to Sections 372 and 373 of the IPC, now Sections 98 and 99 in BNS, which address the buying and selling of minors for prostitution.
In 2022, the Supreme Court dismissed a plea that sought to establish gender-neutral laws and reassess the misuse of IPC provisions related to sexual harassment (Sections 354A-354D), criminal intimidation (506), and other offenses.
A division bench noted,
“The reliefs claimed in this writ petition are not capable of being granted by this Court in exercise of its writ jurisdiction as that would constitute encroachment into legislative field. Hence, this writ petition is dismissed.”
The petition, filed by law students Anam Kamil and Shrikant Prasad, argued that the trend of women misusing sexual offense laws against men is rising in India, undermining the respect, honor, and dignity of men when allegations of sexual offenses are made.
The petitioners contended,
“In today’s world, women are also harassing males and subjecting them to cruelty. Hence the petitioners have submitted that these laws should be amended according to the present needs and situation in the same manners as the decriminalization of Homosexuality by the Court in 2018.”