Published On: August 20, 2026
Authored By: Ayan Maji
Department of Law, University of Calcutta
Abstract
Indian criminal law has historically developed around the legitimate objective of protecting women from structural violence within marriage. Statutory measures such as the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, Section 84 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (formerly Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code), and the offence of dowry death reflect Parliament’s response to pervasive violence against women. However, recent instances of husbands being murdered by their spouses, or in conspiracies involving intimate partners, have generated renewed debate regarding whether India’s criminal justice framework adequately recognises male victims of domestic abuse and intimate partner homicide. While homicide offences themselves remain gender-neutral, the surrounding legal architecture concerning prevention, victim identification, domestic violence protection and crime recording remains predominantly gender-specific.
This article argues that the principal legal deficiency is not unequal punishment after homicide but unequal institutional recognition before homicide occurs. It critically analyses constitutional guarantees under Articles 14 and 21, relevant provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, judicial precedents, committee reports and comparative legal developments to argue that Indian criminal law should gradually evolve towards a victim-centric rather than gender-exclusive framework, without weakening existing protections for women. The article further contends that the absence of official National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) classification of husband killings creates an empirical blind spot that inhibits informed criminal law reform. Recent scholarship has similarly noted that India lacks official categorisation of husband killings, despite growing academic attention to intimate partner homicide involving male victims.
I. Introduction
The home is ordinarily conceived as the safest institution within society. Yet criminal law repeatedly demonstrates that the family may also become the site of its gravest violence. Indian legal discourse has understandably focused on crimes against women within marriage — dowry deaths, domestic violence, marital cruelty and honour crimes. This focus reflects historical realities and constitutional commitments towards substantive equality.
Nevertheless, constitutional equality cannot become selective equality. Every legal system must periodically examine whether its foundational assumptions continue to correspond with evolving social realities.
Recent prosecutions involving wives allegedly conspiring with lovers or third parties to murder their husbands have attracted significant public attention. At the same time, civil society organisations have argued that India lacks official statistical mechanisms to identify or separately record husband killings, making the phenomenon difficult to evaluate empirically. Importantly, these claims are largely based on media documentation rather than official government datasets, underscoring the need for caution in drawing conclusions.
The present inquiry therefore does not proceed from the proposition that husbands have become the primary victims of domestic homicide. Available evidence does not support such a conclusion. Instead, the article asks a narrower constitutional question:
Does Indian criminal law adequately recognise and respond when men become victims of serious domestic abuse culminating in homicide?
This distinction is fundamental. The issue is neither numerical competition between male and female victimhood nor dilution of existing protections available to women. Rather, it concerns whether criminal law can remain constitutionally neutral while simultaneously presuming that domestic violence flows predominantly in one direction.
The central thesis advanced in this article is that Indian criminal law contains gendered institutional blind spots operating at three distinct levels:
First, preventive legal mechanisms overwhelmingly assume female victimhood.
Secondly, official crime data does not separately classify husband killings or male intimate partner homicide.
Thirdly, legal discourse frequently equates domestic violence with violence against women, leaving male victims largely outside specialised institutional responses.
These blind spots become constitutionally significant because Articles 14 and 21 guarantee equal protection of law and equal protection of life irrespective of gender.
II. The Concept of Husband Killings within Criminal Jurisprudence
A. Beyond Media Narratives: A Legal Definition
From the perspective of criminal law, there is nothing exceptional about the offence itself. The killing of a husband by his wife attracts the ordinary offence of murder under Sections 101–103 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, depending upon the circumstances.
The legal distinction instead lies in the relationship between offender and victim.
Criminologists classify such offences as intimate partner homicide (IPH), referring to the killing of one spouse or intimate partner by another. International scholarship treats wife killings and husband killings as subcategories of intimate partner homicide rather than entirely separate offences.
Indian criminal legislation, however, contains no statutory recognition of intimate partner homicide as a distinct criminological category. This omission produces several consequences: investigators prosecute the offence as an ordinary murder, courts decide liability under ordinary homicide provisions, and the NCRB records the offence simply as murder. Consequently, valuable information regarding domestic abuse, coercive control, marital conflict, previous complaints and behavioural escalation often disappears within broader homicide statistics.
The legal consequence is not merely statistical. Poor categorisation produces poor legislation. Without reliable empirical data, Parliament cannot meaningfully evaluate whether existing preventive mechanisms require reform.
B. The Missing Data Problem
Unlike dowry deaths, custodial deaths or honour killings, husband killings are not separately identified within official criminal statistics. This absence deserves constitutional attention. Evidence-based criminal legislation depends upon identifying recurring patterns of victimisation. Where official statistics fail to distinguish intimate partner homicide involving male victims, policymakers remain dependent upon fragmented judicial decisions, newspaper reports and academic compilations rather than comprehensive governmental datasets. Recent legal scholarship has specifically identified this absence of NCRB categorisation as a structural weakness in understanding the phenomenon.
The problem therefore extends beyond academic curiosity. A legislature cannot effectively prevent what it does not systematically measure.
III. Gender Neutrality in Criminal Law: Appearance versus Reality
A. Is Indian Criminal Law Truly Gender Neutral?
A common response to demands for reform is that murder law is already gender neutral. This assertion is formally correct. Neither the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita nor its predecessor, the Indian Penal Code, distinguishes punishment according to the victim’s sex. Whoever intentionally causes death with the requisite mens rea commits murder. The offender may be husband, wife, stranger or relative. Punishment remains identical.
However, this observation captures only one stage of criminal justice. Modern criminal law performs four interconnected functions: prevention, protection, prosecution and punishment. Gender neutrality exists primarily at the final stage; earlier stages reveal significant asymmetry.
B. The Preventive Framework
The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 recognises only women as “aggrieved persons”. Similarly, the offence of cruelty by husband or his relatives was enacted specifically to address violence suffered by married women. These statutes were enacted against the background of overwhelming evidence of violence against women and remain constitutionally justifiable as protective legislation.
Yet an unintended consequence follows. Where a husband experiences sustained psychological abuse, coercive control or escalating violence within marriage, there exists no equivalent specialised statutory framework designed to provide preventive relief. Instead, he must rely upon general criminal provisions governing assault, criminal intimidation or wrongful restraint after specific offences have already occurred.
Thus, while homicide provisions remain neutral, preventive domestic violence legislation remains gender-specific. The distinction becomes particularly significant because preventive legislation exists precisely to interrupt escalating violence before fatal consequences arise.
IV. Constitutional Equality and Victim Recognition
A. Article 14 and Reasonable Classification
Article 14 permits reasonable classification where legislation rests upon an intelligible differentia bearing rational relation to legislative objectives. Women-specific protective legislation has consistently survived constitutional scrutiny because Parliament recognised historical structural inequalities affecting women. Protective discrimination therefore serves substantive equality rather than formal equality.
However, constitutional doctrine equally requires that classifications remain connected to contemporary legislative objectives. Where evidence demonstrates overlooked categories of victims, complete statutory silence may itself invite constitutional scrutiny.
The constitutional question is not whether women continue to require legal protection — they undoubtedly do. Rather, it is whether excluding male victims from any comparable preventive recognition remains proportionate where they too may experience domestic abuse culminating in homicide. Constitutional equality does not always demand identical statutes; it demands that similarly situated victims receive meaningful legal consideration.
B. Article 21 and the State’s Duty to Protect Life
Article 21 protects every person’s life and personal liberty. Judicial interpretation has repeatedly expanded this guarantee beyond mere physical survival to include dignity, bodily integrity and meaningful protection against unlawful violence.
If the State acknowledges predictable patterns of domestic violence only where women become victims while overlooking analogous risks faced by men, the constitutional obligation to protect life becomes unevenly discharged. The duty imposed by Article 21 is preventive as well as punitive. The Constitution expects the State not merely to punish homicide after death but also to establish reasonable institutional mechanisms capable of preventing foreseeable violence.
Accordingly, the constitutional debate should not concern competing claims of victimhood but rather whether every citizen exposed to serious domestic violence possesses access to adequate preventive legal protection.
V. Judicial Recognition of Procedural Fairness
The Supreme Court has itself recognised that criminal law must remain sensitive both to genuine victims and to procedural fairness. In Sushil Kumar Sharma v. Union of India,[1] while upholding the constitutional validity of Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, the Court cautioned that a statutory provision intended as a protective “shield” should not become an instrument of abuse.
Similarly, Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar[2] introduced safeguards against routine arrests under Section 498A, emphasising that criminal procedure must balance victim protection with individual liberty.
These decisions are frequently misunderstood. Neither judgment questioned the necessity of protecting women from domestic violence. Instead, both reaffirmed that criminal justice must simultaneously achieve effective victim protection and constitutional fairness.
The same reasoning possesses broader implications. Recognising male victims of serious domestic abuse would not undermine women’s rights. Rather, it would strengthen the constitutional principle that criminal law should respond to factual victimisation rather than gender-based assumptions.
VI. Judicial Responses to Gendered Assumptions in Criminal Law
Indian constitutional jurisprudence has progressively moved away from rigid gender stereotypes towards a rights-based understanding of equality. Although the decisions below did not directly concern husband killings, they provide an important constitutional framework for evaluating whether criminal law should continue to conceptualise domestic violence exclusively through the lens of female victimhood.
A. Joseph Shine v. Union of India: Marriage and Constitutional Individualism
In Joseph Shine v. Union of India,[3] the Supreme Court unanimously struck down Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code, holding that the offence of adultery violated Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution. The Court criticised the colonial assumption that a wife constituted the property of her husband and reaffirmed that marriage does not extinguish individual constitutional autonomy.
The significance of Joseph Shine extends beyond adultery. The judgment rejected the broader notion that matrimonial relationships should be regulated through gendered presumptions. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud observed that constitutional morality requires recognition of individual dignity rather than stereotypical conceptions of marital roles.
This reasoning has direct implications for intimate partner homicide. If constitutional law rejects paternalistic assumptions concerning women’s agency, it should equally reject assumptions that only women are capable of occupying the position of vulnerable spouse. Constitutional equality requires legal institutions to identify vulnerability through evidence rather than gender.
However, Joseph Shine should not be misunderstood as implying that adultery provides legal justification for homicide. The Court expressly clarified that adultery remains a civil ground for matrimonial relief under personal laws and cannot excuse criminal violence. Consequently, where an extramarital relationship culminates in conspiracy to murder a spouse, criminal liability must continue to be determined under the ordinary principles governing homicide, conspiracy and common intention.
B. Hiral P. Harsora v. Kusum Narottamdas Harsora: A Wider Understanding of Domestic Violence
The decision in Hiral P. Harsora v. Kusum Narottamdas Harsora[4] marked another important constitutional development. The Supreme Court struck down the words “adult male” from the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, thereby allowing complaints against female relatives as well.
Although the judgment retained the Act’s protection exclusively for women victims, it nevertheless recognised that perpetrators of domestic violence are not necessarily male. This distinction is constitutionally significant.
The Court accepted that violence within domestic relationships cannot always be explained through conventional gender binaries. Once that premise is accepted, an obvious question emerges: if perpetrators may be of either sex, should victimhood continue to be statutorily restricted to one sex alone?
The judgment stopped short of addressing this issue because it was not directly before the Court. Nevertheless, its reasoning weakens simplistic assumptions regarding domestic violence as exclusively male aggression.
C. Rajesh Sharma v. State of Uttar Pradesh: Balancing Protection and Procedural Fairness
In Rajesh Sharma v. State of Uttar Pradesh,[5] the Supreme Court acknowledged growing concerns regarding misuse of Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code while simultaneously reaffirming the importance of protecting genuine victims of domestic violence.
The Court proposed safeguards against arbitrary arrests, including Family Welfare Committees, though some of these directions were subsequently modified in Social Action Forum for Manav Adhikar v. Union of India.[6]
These decisions collectively illustrate an important constitutional principle. Protective legislation does not become unconstitutional merely because misuse occasionally occurs. Conversely, the possibility of misuse cannot be ignored simply because legislation serves an important social objective. The constitutional challenge therefore lies in designing criminal procedures capable of protecting genuine victims without sacrificing procedural fairness.
This balanced approach is equally relevant to discussions concerning husband killings. Recognition of male victimisation should not weaken statutory protection available to women. Instead, both objectives should coexist within a constitutionally balanced criminal justice system.
VII. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 and the Continuity of Gendered Legislative Design
The replacement of the Indian Penal Code by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023 presented Parliament with an opportunity to reconsider several long-standing structural issues within Indian criminal law. However, while the BNS modernised terminology and reorganised offences, it largely retained the existing legislative philosophy concerning domestic violence and matrimonial offences.
Murder remains entirely gender-neutral. Criminal conspiracy, abetment and common intention likewise continue to apply irrespective of the victim’s sex. Yet preventive legal mechanisms remain substantially unchanged.
Consequently, the BNS reflects formal equality in punishment but not substantive neutrality in victim protection. From a constitutional perspective, this distinction is increasingly difficult to justify solely through historical assumptions. Legislation designed in the 1980s and early 2000s responded to the pressing social realities of those periods. Contemporary criminal law reform, however, should also account for emerging empirical evidence concerning coercive control, psychological abuse and intimate partner violence experienced by persons irrespective of gender.
VIII. Committee Reports and Criminal Law Reform
A. The Committee on Reforms of the Criminal Justice System (Justice V.S. Malimath Committee)
The Justice Malimath Committee (2003) advocated a victim-oriented criminal justice system and repeatedly emphasised that criminal procedure should better recognise victims’ interests rather than focusing exclusively upon offenders.
Although the Committee did not specifically address husband killings, its recommendations possess wider implications. A genuinely victim-centric criminal justice framework cannot selectively recognise victims according to gender. Once victim protection becomes the organising principle of criminal law, legislative policy should remain responsive to every identifiable category of victim whose rights require protection.
The Committee’s broader philosophy therefore supports expanding empirical research into male victimisation within domestic settings without diminishing protections available to women.
B. The Justice J.S. Verma Committee
The Justice Verma Committee (2013) was established following the Delhi gang rape of December 2012 and understandably concentrated upon strengthening legal protections for women. Its recommendations profoundly influenced subsequent criminal law reforms.
However, the Committee also emphasised constitutional values of dignity, equality and individual autonomy rather than simplistic gender stereotypes. Accordingly, while the Committee focused upon violence against women due to its terms of reference, its constitutional reasoning remains compatible with broader victim-centred reforms where supported by empirical evidence.
C. The Law Commission of India
Various Law Commission Reports have consistently recognised that criminal legislation must evolve alongside changing social conditions. The 42nd Report on the Indian Penal Code, the 154th Report on the Code of Criminal Procedure, and the 262nd Report on the Death Penalty all reflect an underlying commitment to evidence-based criminal justice reform rather than immutable legislative assumptions.
Although none specifically recommends gender-neutral domestic violence legislation, the Commission’s institutional methodology remains instructive. Reform should be guided by empirical research, constitutional guarantees, comparative experience and criminological evidence. Applying these principles suggests that Parliament should first commission systematic national research concerning intimate partner homicide involving male victims before determining whether legislative intervention is necessary.
IX. Comparative Perspectives: Lessons from Other Jurisdictions
Comparative criminal law demonstrates that several common-law jurisdictions have gradually shifted towards gender-neutral models of domestic violence legislation.
A. United Kingdom
The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 (UK) adopts a gender-neutral definition of domestic abuse, recognising that victims may be male or female while acknowledging that women remain disproportionately affected. Importantly, the Act focuses upon abusive conduct rather than the identity of either victim or offender. This legislative model preserves empirical recognition of women’s disproportionate victimisation while avoiding statutory exclusion of male victims.
B. Canada
Canadian criminal law similarly adopts gender-neutral offences relating to assault, coercive conduct and homicide. Domestic violence policies recognise male victims while continuing to acknowledge that women constitute the majority of victims requiring institutional assistance. This demonstrates that recognising male victims does not necessarily reduce protection available to women; rather, it broadens access to criminal justice mechanisms.
C. Australia
Australian states increasingly employ gender-neutral domestic violence statutes emphasising coercive control, psychological abuse and patterns of domination instead of rigid assumptions regarding offender identity. These developments suggest an emerging international consensus: domestic violence legislation may remain sensitive to gendered social realities without becoming gender-exclusive.
X. Towards a Victim-Centred Constitutional Framework
The debate concerning husband killings often becomes polarised between two unsatisfactory positions. One position argues that existing women’s protections should be diluted in favour of complete formal neutrality. The opposing position denies the need to recognise male victimisation altogether.
Both approaches are constitutionally problematic. The first ignores persistent structural violence suffered by women. The second overlooks Article 14’s guarantee of equal protection and Article 21’s guarantee of life irrespective of gender.
A more principled constitutional approach would instead recognise three propositions simultaneously. First, women continue to experience disproportionate levels of domestic violence and therefore remain entitled to strong statutory protection. Secondly, the existence of widespread violence against women does not logically exclude the existence of serious violence against men within intimate relationships. Thirdly, criminal law should remain sufficiently flexible to protect every victim whose life is endangered while preserving targeted measures where objectively justified.
Such an approach transforms the debate from one of competing victimhood into one of constitutional inclusiveness.
XI. Rethinking Criminal Law Through a Victim-Centred Constitutional Lens
The debate surrounding husband killings is often framed in absolutist terms. One side portrays calls for reform as an attempt to dilute legal protections for women, while the other argues that the legal system has entirely ignored male victimisation. Both positions obscure the more fundamental constitutional question: what should be the organising principle of criminal law in a constitutional democracy?
The answer cannot simply be gender. Nor can it be statistical majoritarianism. Criminal law exists primarily to protect legally recognised interests — life, liberty, bodily integrity and dignity. These interests belong equally to every individual under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution.
Accordingly, the legitimacy of any criminal justice framework should be assessed by asking whether similarly situated victims enjoy comparable access to legal protection. If two individuals — irrespective of gender — face sustained domestic abuse creating a foreseeable risk of serious bodily harm or death, the constitutional burden lies upon the State to justify differential legal treatment.
This does not imply that identical legislative measures are constitutionally mandatory. Indian constitutional jurisprudence has repeatedly recognised that affirmative legislation protecting historically disadvantaged groups may satisfy the test of reasonable classification. However, protective discrimination is constitutionally sustainable only so long as the classification remains proportionate to its legislative purpose.
A legal framework that permanently excludes one category of victims from specialised preventive mechanisms risks transforming a constitutionally permissible classification into an over-inclusive and under-inclusive legislative design.
Therefore, the question is not whether women deserve legal protection — they unquestionably do — but whether the constitutional promise of equal protection requires additional institutional mechanisms for recognising male victims of serious domestic abuse.
XII. The Structural Blind Spots in Indian Criminal Law
The preceding discussion demonstrates that the shortcomings of Indian criminal law do not arise from the substantive law of homicide. Murder under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita is entirely gender-neutral. Instead, the deficiencies lie in the broader institutional framework within which homicide occurs. Three structural blind spots may be identified.
A. The Blind Spot of Data
The first blind spot concerns empirical invisibility. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) records murders according to broad offence classifications but does not maintain a separate category for intimate partner homicide where the husband is the victim. Consequently, policymakers lack reliable nationwide information regarding the prevalence of husband killings, recurring motives behind such offences, prior histories of domestic abuse, patterns of coercive control, and the socio-economic characteristics of victims and offenders.
In criminal law, legislative reform should ordinarily follow empirical evidence rather than anecdotal reporting. The absence of systematic data therefore creates a policy vacuum. A rational first step would be the introduction of a separate NCRB classification for Intimate Partner Homicide (IPH), distinguishing between different relational categories without implying parity in prevalence. Such classification would not alter substantive criminal law but would significantly improve evidence-based policymaking.
B. The Blind Spot of Prevention
Secondly, Indian criminal law remains overwhelmingly reactive. The legal system effectively punishes homicide after it occurs but provides comparatively limited preventive remedies where domestic abuse is experienced by husbands.
A husband subjected to repeated emotional abuse, threats, coercive control or physical violence must ordinarily invoke general criminal provisions relating to assault, criminal intimidation or wrongful restraint. Unlike female victims, he cannot seek remedies under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005.
The consequence is a preventive asymmetry rather than a punitive one. The law intervenes more comprehensively for one category of victims before violence escalates, while relying largely upon ordinary criminal offences for another. From a constitutional standpoint, preventive criminal justice constitutes an important component of Article 21 because protection of life necessarily includes reasonable measures aimed at preventing foreseeable violence.
C. The Blind Spot of Legal Discourse
The third blind spot concerns legal scholarship itself. Academic discussion frequently treats domestic violence and violence against women as interchangeable concepts. While this reflects historical realities and the disproportionate victimisation of women, the two concepts are not identical.
Domestic violence refers to violence occurring within intimate or familial relationships. Violence against women constitutes one, albeit the largest, category within that broader phenomenon. Conflating the two concepts risks obscuring other forms of domestic victimisation requiring legal recognition.
A mature constitutional discourse should therefore distinguish between acknowledging the gendered realities of domestic violence and assuming that domestic violence is necessarily gender-exclusive.
XIII. Legislative and Institutional Reforms
The objective of reform should not be to dismantle existing protections for women but to strengthen the coherence of Indian criminal law by making it genuinely victim-oriented.
A. Enacting a Gender-Inclusive Civil Protection Framework
One possible reform would involve replacing the existing gender-specific model of civil domestic violence protection with legislation recognising any individual in a domestic relationship as a potential victim, while simultaneously preserving special welfare measures for women where empirically justified.
Such legislation may continue to recognise that women constitute the majority of victims requiring institutional support, yet it should not exclude male victims from seeking protection orders where circumstances warrant. This model has been adopted in several common law jurisdictions without diminishing legal safeguards available to women.
B. Reforming Crime Recording Practices
The Ministry of Home Affairs and the NCRB should develop separate statistical classifications for intimate partner homicide, domestic homicide, coercive control preceding homicide, and repeat domestic violence complaints involving eventual homicide. Such reforms would improve criminological research and facilitate targeted policy interventions. Evidence rather than anecdote should become the basis of future legislative debates.
C. Expanding Police and Judicial Training
Police investigations into domestic disputes frequently proceed upon unconscious assumptions regarding victimhood. Institutional training programmes should therefore emphasise behavioural indicators of domestic abuse irrespective of gender, while remaining sensitive to the disproportionate victimisation of women. Similarly, judicial academies should incorporate comparative scholarship concerning intimate partner homicide and coercive control into continuing legal education.
D. Establishing National Research on Male Victimisation
Parliament should consider requesting the Law Commission of India or an expert committee to undertake a comprehensive empirical study examining the prevalence of male victimisation in domestic relationships, patterns of intimate partner homicide, the adequacy of existing legal remedies, comparative legislative models, and the constitutional implications of gender-exclusive protective legislation. Meaningful legislative reform should emerge from rigorous empirical research rather than ideological contestation.
XIV. Addressing Counter-Arguments
Any proposal advocating greater recognition of male victims must confront legitimate concerns.
The first objection is that expanding legal recognition may weaken protections for women by creating false equivalence between two empirically different phenomena. This concern deserves serious consideration. Available evidence continues to indicate that women remain disproportionately affected by domestic violence, dowry-related abuse and intimate partner homicide. Accordingly, this article does not advocate abandoning women-specific welfare measures or ignoring structural gender inequality.
Instead, the proposed reforms seek to distinguish victim recognition from victim equivalence. Recognising male victims does not imply that male and female victimisation occur with equal frequency. Constitutional equality does not require statistical symmetry; it requires legal responsiveness wherever genuine victimisation exists.
A second objection concerns the possibility of misuse of gender-neutral legislation. However, the Supreme Court has consistently held that the possibility of abuse cannot itself invalidate beneficial legislation. Procedural safeguards, judicial scrutiny and evidentiary standards provide more constitutionally appropriate responses than wholesale denial of legal recognition.
Finally, some critics argue that ordinary criminal law already protects every person because offences such as murder, assault and criminal intimidation are gender-neutral. This argument overlooks the preventive function of specialised domestic violence legislation. General criminal offences punish completed acts; protective legislation seeks to interrupt escalating patterns of abuse before they culminate in serious violence. The constitutional significance of this distinction cannot be overstated.
XV. Conclusion
Indian criminal law has rightly devoted considerable attention to combating violence against women. That legislative commitment remains indispensable and should not be weakened.
Nevertheless, constitutional fidelity requires acknowledging that the legitimacy of criminal law ultimately depends upon its capacity to protect every individual’s life and dignity. The phenomenon of husband killings should not be sensationalised, nor should isolated incidents become the basis for sweeping legislative conclusions. Equally, however, recurring instances of male victims within intimate relationships should not be dismissed merely because they fall outside traditional assumptions concerning domestic violence.
The central finding of this article is that the principal weakness of Indian criminal law lies not in the law of homicide itself but in its preventive architecture. While homicide offences remain gender-neutral, domestic violence legislation, crime recording practices and institutional responses continue to reflect a predominantly gender-specific understanding of victimhood.
Accordingly, future criminal law reform should pursue four interconnected objectives:
1. Introduce systematic NCRB classification of intimate partner homicide to facilitate evidence-based policymaking.
2. Commission a comprehensive Law Commission or expert committee study on male victimisation and domestic homicide.
3. Strengthen preventive mechanisms through a more inclusive victim-centred framework, while retaining targeted protections where constitutionally justified.
4. Promote police, prosecutorial and judicial training that recognises domestic violence as a behavioural phenomenon rather than one defined exclusively by gender.
Ultimately, constitutional criminal law should aspire neither to gender neutrality in the abstract nor to gender exclusivity in practice. Its objective must instead be constitutional inclusiveness — a framework in which every victim is visible, every allegation is investigated fairly, and every life receives equal protection under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution.
Research Article by Ayan Maji, Freshman, Department of Law, University of Calcutta.
References
[1] Sushil Kumar Sharma v. Union of India, (2005) 6 SCC 281 (India).
[2] Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar, (2014) 8 SCC 273 (India).
[3] Joseph Shine v. Union of India, (2019) 3 SCC 39 (India).
[4] Hiral P. Harsora v. Kusum Narottamdas Harsora, (2016) 10 SCC 165 (India).
[5] Rajesh Sharma v. State of Uttar Pradesh, (2018) 10 SCC 472 (India).
[6] Social Action Forum for Manav Adhikar v. Union of India, (2018) 10 SCC 443 (India).
