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Unmarried Women Told Not to Have Sex

Even against the backdrop of a country that largely abhors premarital sex, a judge’s warning to women earlier this month surprised many.

“Girls are morally and socially bound not to indulge in sexual intercourse before a proper marriage and if they do so, it would be to their peril,” Judge Virender Bhatt wrote in an Oct. 7. Delhi trial court ruling, which acquitted a man of rape charges that were filed against him in 2009.

Mr. Bhatt wrote that the facts presented to him appeared to support a consensual sexual relationship between the victim and the suspect. He cited the fact that the young woman had told police she was in love with the man and wished to marry him, but that her parents were against their relationship. She also said that the man had told her to go on a trip with him to another state so they could have a court wedding, but that didn’t happen. Instead, he applied vermilion powder to her forehead — worn by married women in India — and told her they were now husband and wife, which is why she consented to sex with him. When they returned from the trip, the man’s family threw her out of the house, the ruling stated. The woman’s family then went to the police.

Mr. Bhatt said that young women “voluntarily elope with their lovers to explore the greener pasteurs of bodily pleasure,” and then make up stories of being raped or kidnapped to avoid being punished by relatively conservative parents. The young woman was not identified in the ruling and could not be reached for comment.

The judge’s remarks created a stir for various reasons. For one, Mr. Bhatt is one of several judges assigned to special fast-track courts to hear rape cases, which were set up in the Indian capital in response to public anger in the wake of a gang rape in December.

In addition to completing those trials more swiftly, some women’s groups have hoped these courts would be role models for their approach to women and their rights.

Mrinal Satish, a professor at the New Delhi-based National Law University who has researched how deep-seated perceptions about sex and marriage influence sentencing in rape cases in India, said he found the judgment troubling because it didn’t cite case law or legal reasoning.

“The issue would be whether there is consent or not,” said Mr. Satish, who noted that at one point in her testimony, the woman said that the man she accused had taken cellphone pictures of her and threatened to blackmail her, which could “vitiate consent.”

The judge “does not say why he is discarding that evidence…instead he goes off on this entire tangent,” Mr. Satish said.

The judge, Mr. Bhatt, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Others have said the judge was entitled to acquit the accused if the facts didn’t support this particular allegation – but that he wasn’t entitled to use the bench to issue messages to women about premarital sex.

Madhu Mehra, the executive director of Partners for Law in Development, a New Delhi group that focuses on women’s rights, criticized the “awkward, sexist, patriarchal constructions about women’s choice and sexuality” that she says take place frequently in Indian courtrooms.

Judges are far from the only ones to issue declarations about how women should behave in India. But Ms. Mehra added that it was particularly worrying when they do so because they are supposed to uphold the Constitution and the individual freedoms it protects.

She added that when judges issue social messages, it is often in the context of cases involving sexual relations, or sex crimes, and the messages are mostly directed to women. If judges aren’t able to resist from addressing society, it would only be fair that they direct their concerns to both men and women, she said.

“If you must give social messages, you need to tell people that an exercise of sexuality and desire should not be guilt-ridden, it should not involve this level of hurt and manipulation and lies,” Ms. Mehra said.

Public comments about how terrible it is for people to have sex outside wedlock are common in India — as are solutions. Earlier this year, a Madras High Court judge who was trying to be helpful to women, suggested a declaration of marriage could be made if a woman comes before a court with evidence of having had sexual intercourse with a man.

“This declaration would strengthen the Indian Culture and would protect the young womens welfare, character and status among the society,” wrote Justice C.S. Karnan.

And last month, the day a judge sentenced four men to death for gang-raping and killing a woman traveling on a bus with a male friend in December, a lawyer for two of the men railed against premarital sex.

A.P. Singh told reporters that he would burn his daughter alive if she went out at night with a boyfriend or had premarital sex.

He later told The Wall Street Journal that he was badgered into making those remarks by “an anti-social element,” but maintained that most in India would agree with his views over premarital sex. It appears he wasn’t wrong.

 Source: The Wall Street Journal