Calls have been growing in India for the chief justice of the Supreme Court to resign "without a moment's delay" after his remarks in two cases of alleged rape.
In one case, Justice Bobde, asked a 23-year-old man accused of raping a girl whether he would marry her. "If you want to marry (her) we can help you. If not, you lose your job and go to jail," he said.
His comments shocked many, especially considering the horrific accusations the girl (who was 16 at the time) had made against the man, a distant relative. The male relative is accused of stalking, tying up, gagging, repeatedly raping a minor school-going girl, and threatening to douse her in petrol and set her alight, to hurl acid at her, and to have her brother killed. The rape came to light when the victim attempted suicide.
The girl's family said they had agreed not to go to the police because they were promised by the accused's mother that once the girl became an adult, they would marry the two. In a country where victims are often blamed for rape, and sexual assault carries lifelong stigma, her family agreed to the arrangement. But after the accused backtracked from his promise and married someone else, the survivor went to the police.
The accused, who is a government employee in the western state of Maharashtra, had been granted anticipatory bail by a lower court after he pleaded that he would lose his job if arrested. But the Bombay High Court called the order "atrocious" and cancelled his bail. The man then approached the Supreme Court - which granted him protection from arrest for four weeks and where the infamous exchange took place between his lawyer and Justice Bobde.
An open letter from more than 5,000 feminists, rights activists and concerned citizens said to Chief Justice Bobde, "Your proposal of marriage as an amicable solution to settle the case of rape of a minor girl is worse than atrocious and insensitive for it deeply erodes the right of victims to seek justice. By suggesting that this [alleged] rapist marry the victim-survivor, you, the Chief Justice of India, sought to condemn her to a lifetime of rape at the hands of the tormentor who drove her to attempt suicide."
In a second case, the supreme court was hearing a petition filed by a man accused of rape by a woman he had been in a live-in relationship with for two years. The woman claimed that she married a man in 2014, and afterward she consented to have sex with him. The man denied marrying her and claimed that the sexual relations between them had been consensual. She accused him of rape after he married another woman. While hearing the case, Justice Bobde agreed that "it was wrong to make false promises of marriage" but then went on to ask, "if a couple is living together as man and wife, the husband may be a brutal man, but can you call the act of sexual intercourse between a lawfully wedded man and wife as rape"?
Campaigners say Justice Bobde's comments are "extremely problematic" in a country where women have been constantly fighting a regressive mindset that accepts and normalizes sexual violence against them, especially within the home. "This comment not only legitimises any kind of sexual, physical and mental violence by the husband, but it normalises the torture that Indian women have been facing within marriages for years without any legal recourse."
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