Men Can Get Raped Too: The Legal Tussle
- IJLLR Journal
- Jul 18, 2022
- 2 min read
Neena Krishna, Fox Legum & Alliance University, Bangalore
“A murderer kills the body, but a rapist destroys the soul” - Justice Krishna Iyer.
Only women are protected by law in India from rape and sexual harassment. There are no laws or statutes to shield males from the heinous act of rape or sexual harassment. The sole section of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 that discusses "sodomy" is Section 377. The remaining portions are all geared toward women. The most important point to keep in mind is that, contrary to Sections 354A through 354D and Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code, which specify that only men may commit sexual violence, both the perpetrator and the victim may be of any gender.
Can men file a rape case against women in India?
In India, there’s no law if a male rapes another male or female rape a male. At most, they can be sodomised under sec 377 of IPC that is modelled on the Buggery Act, 1533 where unnatural sex is an “Act against god”. Except for this section, all other laws and sections are meant only for females. Only women are considered victims of rape under Indian Penal Codes 375 and 376. Simply put, India's one-sided rape laws ignore sexual assault against women and harassment against men. Moreover, all most every case goes unreported. If we consider the ground reality that is reflected in the survey of Insia Dariwala which surveyed 1500 male out of which 71% of men surveyed said they were abused, 84.9% said they had not told anyone about the abuse and the primary reasons for this were shame (55.6%), followed by confusion (50.9%), fear (43.5%) and guilt (28.7%)
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