"Thus the prosecutrix (the wife) and the accused being legally wedded husband and wife, the prosecutrix being major, the sexual intercourse between the two, even if forcible, is not rape and no culpability can be fastened upon the accused," said additional Delhi sessions judge Virender Bhat about a case where the wife alleged she was drugged, dragged to the registrar getting married in March 2013, and then raped and abandoned. She filed the complaint with police in October 2013.

This mirrors the exception to the offence of rape under section 375 of the Indian Penal Code that "sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under fifteen years of age, is not rape".

The accused claimed that the marriage ceremony had taken place in 2011 already and his wife had framed him, while the judge found no "clinching or convincing evidence" that she had been drugged. [IANS]