It’s the 21st century and India, despite being the world’s largest democracy, has the distinction of being one of the 36 countries in the world that have still not criminalized marital rape.
Marital rape is defined as the act of sexual intercourse with one's spouse without her consent. One of the most horrifying and repressive issues with the Indian legal regime is that this is perfectly legal. Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) considers the forced sex in marriages as a crime only when the wife is below age 15. Thus, marital rape is not a criminal offense under the IPC. Marital rape victims have to take recourse to the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005 (PWDVA), which offers only a civil remedy for the offence.
My question is, why should a woman complain of a lesser offence to get justice? Why should she settle for monetary compensation when her personal dignity and rights have been abused?

As per current law, a wife is presumed to have delivered perpetual ‘implied consent' to have sex with her husband after entering into marital relations. This itself is rooted in the troubling patriarchal notion that a wife is the property of her husband after marriage, and he can do with her as he pleases.

In 2016, the Union government declined a plea to criminalize marital rape based on the argument that it will destabilize the institution of marriage in India and could be misused as a tool to harass husbands.

There could be a false complaint for anything; we cannot stop having laws as a result of our fears and apprehensions. The law of criminal jurisprudence still places the onus on the woman to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that she was raped. According to National Crime Records Bureau’s 2019 report- About 70 percent of women in India are victims of domestic violence. If criminalizing the violent rape of two-third of married Indian women destabilizes the institution of marriage and family, so be it.

Sources
• Image from- https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-was-marital-rape-legal-in-new-york-state-until-1984
• https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/criminalising-marital-rape-will-destabilise-marriage-govt-tells-hc/article19581512.ece
• https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-editorials/marital-rape-in-india