Court case(2019) 3 SCC 39

A writ petition under Article 32 challenged s. 497 IPC, which punished a man who had sexual intercourse with the wife of another man without the husband's consent or connivance, while the wife could not be punished even as an abettor, and s. 198(2) CrPC, under which only the husband could prosecute. Earlier benches had upheld the section in Yusuf Abdul Aziz (1954), Sowmithri Vishnu (1985) and V. Revathi (1988).

The Constitution Bench unanimously struck down s. 497 IPC and s. 198(2) CrPC in so far as it related to adultery, overruling the earlier decisions. The section was arbitrary: it treated the wife as the chattel of the husband, whose consent could legalise the act; it punished only the man; it protected the sanctity of marriage only from the husband's side. Adultery may be a ground for divorce and a civil wrong, but criminalising it invades privacy, autonomy and dignity under Article 21. Chandrachud J added that the section perpetuated gender stereotypes, and Indu Malhotra J that it was based on a notion of women as property.