Unit 3: Sexual Offences — Rape; Incest; Pedophile (Child Sexual Abuse); Sexual Harassment and Sexual Harassment at Workplace; Unnatural Sexual Offences
1. Rape (Jabarjasti Karani)
Definition (the Muluki Criminal Code, 2074’s scheme, by principle): rape is sexual intercourse with a person without consent — the Code enumerating the vitiating circumstances: against the person’s will; with consent obtained by fear, force, or coercion; with consent obtained by fraud/misconception of fact (the false-marriage-promise jurisprudence below); where the person is unconscious, of unsound mind, intoxicated, or under the age of statutory incapacity. The definition’s structure: intercourse (the actus, with its medical-evidence issues) + the absence of genuine consent (the mens/fault core: the knowledge of non-consent) + the enumerated vitiations proving it.
Statutory rape: intercourse with a girl below the statutory age is rape regardless of consent or its absence — the child’s legal incapacity to consent (the prescribed case Santosh Kumar Yadav v. GoN (2080), No. 1, D.N. 11015 — child marriage and statutory rape — the two offences’ overlap: the married child’s protection surviving the marriage).
Marital rape: the Code criminalizes sexual intercourse by a husband with his wife without her consent — the long reform arc’s destination (the 2002 recognition as a partial offence; the Code’s fuller provision, graded in punishment by separation-status within the Code’s scheme) — Criminal Law-I’s marital-rape-reform cross-reference now the operative law.
Aggravated rape (the Code’s ladder, by principle): rape of a child (graded by age bands — the youngest victims the gravest); gang rape; rape by a person in custody/authority (the custodial rape of the official, the teacher, the guardian); rape causing serious injury or death; repeat offences. The sentencing reforms (the amendments raising the tariff in response to the era’s outrages — the public movements for justice in child-rape cases) — state the grading without inventing year-counts.
Proof of rape (the litigation’s real battlefield — the prescribed case pair):
- Janak Tripathi & Others v. HMG, NKP (2062 B.S.), No. 9, p. 269
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