Chiraiya puts India's marital rape exception, consent debate in focus

Chiraiya, a six-episode Hindi social drama on JioHotstar led by Divya Dutta and featuring characters such as Kamlesh and Pooja, has drawn an audience of millions and reignited public debate over India’s marital-rape exception by asking why consent is treated as unimportant after marriage. Social media conversations around consent and misogyny have followed the show’s release, turning a television storyline into a national policy flashpoint.

The legal posture that the series interrogates is concrete: the Indian Penal Code’s Exception 2 to Section 375 was carried into the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 as Section 63, which provides that sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, if she is not under 18 years of age, does not amount to rape. That statutory language means that, under the BNS framework enacted in 2023, sexual violence within marriage where the wife is 18 or older is not prosecutable as rape under Section 63 even as other criminal provisions remain available.

The judicial challenge to that carveout has reached the highest courts. In May 2022 the Delhi High Court delivered a split verdict in petitions led by the RIT Foundation and other petitioners: Justice Rajiv Shakdher held the exception unconstitutional, while Justice C. Hari Shankar upheld it, leaving the exception in place and the issue pending before the Supreme Court of India for final resolution. In filings before the Supreme Court, the Union Government of India defended retaining the exception, arguing that striking it down would destabilize the institution of marriage and the family system and urging the judiciary to defer to Parliament on socio-legal policy choices.

The policy stakes are measurable. National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5, 2019–21) reporting indicates nearly one in three women aged 18–49 have experienced some form of spousal violence and about 6 percent reported sexual violence, with analyses showing most married women who experienced sexual violence identified their current husband as the perpetrator. Those figures help explain why petitioners and viewers of Chiraiya argue for criminalization, and why the government and some legal actors caution about sweeping reform without legislative debate.

On the ground, the statutory exception shapes policing, prosecution, and survivor options: because Section 63 excludes such conduct from constituting rape where the wife is adult, criminal rape charges under that section are not available in those cases; survivors may instead seek civil remedies under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, which provides protection orders and related relief. That split legal architecture—criminal rape law excluding married women while the DV Act offers civil relief—frames how police record complaints, how prosecutors determine charges, and what remedies survivors can realistically pursue.

Chiraiya’s popularity has converted a legal technicality into a civic conversation that reaches courtrooms and Parliament. With the matter pending in the Supreme Court and Section 63 intact under the BNS, the eventual resolution will turn on judicial interpretation and on whether legislators in Parliament pursue statutory change that would align criminal law with demands raised by viewers, petitioners such as the RIT Foundation, and the NFHS-5 data documenting the scale of spousal sexual violence.