How The New Criminal Laws Leave Indian Men Stripped Off Rights Against Sexual Harassment?

As from Today curtain lifts off from the New Criminal Laws called the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) Bill, 2023, Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, and Bharatiya Sakshya Bill, 2023. The Indian men are left vulnerable.

Before we understand how Indian men have been wronged, let’s understand briefly about the new laws.

The Three new criminal laws are brought in order to replace the British-era criminal laws called Indian Penal Code (IPC), Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and Indian Evidence Act which are ought to be implemented from July 1, 2024.

The aim to pass these bills was to modernize India’s criminal justice system by incorporating various new provisions, which we will talk about later.

So, how the laws have abandoned the male victims of sexual harassment?

The problem is that these bills have overlooked one of the most important aspects, which is to provide protection to men against sexual offences especially rape and harassment.

The new laws make no new changes to the previous laws. For example, in the previous laws it was written sexual offences against women and children and ‘gender neutral’. The new BNS laws also writes the same. The sections relating to sexual offences are still the same as the previous laws, which uses connotations like women as the victim and man as a perpetrator. Making the new bills a bummer for a historic change towards the notion of gender equality.

According to a site ‘Legal Service India’, the reports by the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that “Nearly 1 in 38 males have experienced completed or attempted rape during his lifetime. About 1 in 4 male victims have experienced this for the first time between 11-17 years old. About 1 in 4 male rape victims reported that it occurred before age 10.”

An article by MenXP states that gender-based violence affects 52.4 percent of married men, according to a survey of 1000 married men ranging in age from 21 to 49 years old in rural communities of Haryana.

In fact, in previous bills as well as new bill, only a man can be held accountable for cruelty to his wife according to section 498A of the Indian Penal Code 1860. There is no para in the constitution that held the wife responsible for domestic abuse.