In a first, man sentenced to three years in jail for marital rape

In a legal first, a man has been sentenced to three years in jail after he was found guilty of having non-consensual sex with his wife, a punishable act under Section 377 (unnatural offences) of the Pakistan Penal Code, The News has reported.

Additional Sessions Judge (South) Ashraf Hussain Khowaja announced the reserved judgment in Karachi after recording evidence and final arguments from both the defence and prosecution sides.

He sentenced the convict named Javed to three-year rigorous imprisonment and ordered him to pay a Rs30,000 fine. If he fails to pay the fine, he would have to undergo an additional one month of simple imprisonment.

“From a perusal of evidence brought at the trial by the prosecution, it appears that the victim has fully established a commission of sodomy with her by the accused being her husband,” the judge observed.

“Though the victim/complainant contradicted some facts relating to the period of her stay with the accused, putting her signature on the memo of site inspection at PS, suffering from disease of piles and her age which are immaterial facts which would not be fatal to the prosecution case,” he added.
The judge noted the medical evidence supported this version. On the other hand, he said the accused failed to establish “enmity” that her wife loved somebody else and therefore she implicated him falsely. The convict’s sisters who appeared as defence witnesses failed even to disclose the name of the alleged affair of the victim, he added.

The victim testified that her husband would commit sodomy with her despite her attempts to stop him. About two months after their marriage, she informed her mother-in-law, who didn’t say anything to him, she said, adding that then she disclosed her ordeal to her sister and brother, after which she lodged an FIR against her husband on November 23, 2022.

Advocate Bahzad Akbar of the Legal Aid Society, who represented the complainant, contended that sodomy falls within the definition of rape and marital rape in this case after an amendment brought to Section 375 of the Pakistan Penal Code in 2021.

He said that the woman’s testimony and medical evidence corroborated the charges against the accused, requesting the judge to punish Javed as per the law.
“I am not sure about other provinces but this is certainly the first such conviction over marital rape in Sindh following the amendment,” he told The News.
He added there are no known convictions on charges of marital rape in the country. An FIR had been lodged under Section 377 of the PPC at the Chakiwara police station on the woman’s complaint.