HC Issues Notice To Centre On Plea For Gender-Neutral Rape Law.

A Bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C. Hari Shankar asked the government to reply within three weeks and posted the matter for further hearing on October 23.
A Public Interest Litigation was filed by Petitioner   Sanjjiiv Kkumaar  and Respondent is Union Of India.
First of all the petition laid emphasis on Ryan International School’s murder case . the genesis of this writ petition goes back to the unfortunate, heartbreaking and gruesome incident of Ryan International School where a devilish wicked man tried to sexually disrobe the bodily integrity of a just 7 year old innocent brave child and when unable to do so brutally murdered a young child who is now son of every mother of India and brother of every woman of India.
Gender equality is the goal, while gender neutrality and gender equity are practices and ways of thinking that help in achieving the goal.
 
The gender specific IPC 375 and IPC 375, read with Consent, Bodily Integrity(Article 21 Right to Privacy) of every citizen, doesn’t confer to Article 14 of Constitution requirement of “everyone is equal before law, that no one can claim special privileges and that all classes are equally subjected to the ordinary law of the land” and “equal protection of all alike in the same situation and under like circumstances” vis-à-vis treatment of Male and thus fails miserably/doesn’t stand Article 14 of Constitution test.
DOCTRINE OF PARI MATERIA says that “It is settled law that two statutes are said to be in pari materia with each other when they deal with the same subject-matter. The rationale behind this rule is based on the interpretative assumption that words employed in legislation are used in an identical sense”.
Privacy ruling has made gender specific present IPC 375 and IPC 376 null, void and unconstitutional as explained above and using Doctrine of Pari Materia, present IPC can be replaced by Gender Neutral IPC 375 and IPC 376 of Ordinance 2013.
He added that as per a recent Supreme Court ruling on right to privacy, both males and females have equal protection of law under the Constitution. “Similarly, if the [rape] victim is male, he has right to equal protection, equal to that of a female in like circumstances,” the plea said, adding that 63 countries have gender-neutral rape laws.
“It becomes very difficult to accept that there is a single reality in rape, that is, men rape women and … this act has a meaning so different for men that it cannot be labelled as rape,” it said.
The petition also claimed that the notion of patriarchy was the reason why men refused to come out in the open to report sexual crimes against them.
“If a male alleges that a female raped him, he is not seen as a real man because the stereotypical patriarchal assumption of men are superior and stronger than women comes into the picture,” it said.
The Delhi High Court has sought the government’s response on a plea seeking to declare the “gender-specific” sections related to rape and its punishment under Indian Penal Code (IPC) as unconstitutional.