One of the most common arguments made against making marital rape a crime is that it is difficult to prove the offence before a court of law. Forensic experts Express spoke to also concur that there will be little forensic evidence that can be presented before the court against the accused, who will be the husband. The main reason? The couple may have shared the bed several times before.
“In case of marital rape, it is very difficult to present any reliable forensic evidence, unless there are external injuries. Seminal residue may be evidence and has a life of 4-5 days. But if the couple was having intercourse immediately prior to the offence, then there can be little biological evidence that will convince courts,” says noted forensic expert P Chandra Sekaran.
Dr V Dekal, former head of the forensic sciences department of Madras Medical College, says the court will presume that the victim had not given her consent, if she says so. But it will look for evidence to corroborate her version. “The most common evidence looked upon are the injury marks that are caused during the assault. The victim must have resisted the accused and this would obviously lead to injury marks on the accused. If there are bite marks or other injuries, that will be taken into consideration,” he says.
In contrast to other rapes, he says that the vaginal injuries may not be present in most marital rapes, especially if the couple was married for years and the victim had undergone pregnancies.
“But it is rare to come across women who would have so strongly resisted the attempts by their husbands to have intercourse with them. So getting such evidences is a bit difficult. In case of men forcing women to unnatural forms of sex, maybe then in a few cases the biological evidence can substantiate the case for prosecution,” says a judicial officer.
However, DMK MP Kanimozhi says the case is no different in other rape cases too. “In most rape cases it is difficult to gather enough evidence. Similar will be the case if the marital rape is also made an offence. I think this is not a worthy argument,” she opines.