The supreme court upheld a karnataka high court decision that necrophilia, or having sex with a corpse, is not considered an offense, holding that present criminal rules do not permit the invocation of rape or unnatural acts against a deceased person.

A court cannot penalize someone for an act that is not recognized as a criminal offense under the current penal code; instead, parliament should study and implement laws addressing the matter, according to a bench of justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Ahsanuddin Amanullah.
 
An appeal against the high court's judgment to exonerate an accused man of rape after he had sex with a woman's body after her murder was being heard by the top court by the karnataka government.

The high court decided in May 2023 that necrophilia did not fall under the purview of either rape or unnatural offenses, despite the trial court having found the accused guilty of both murder and rape.
 
The supreme court noted that the decision was legally solid and that the state may make the required submission to parliament if it desired appropriate revisions, but it declined to intervene in the high court's decision.
 
During the proceedings, Karnataka's additional advocate general Aman Panwar argued that the term 'body' in Section 375(c) of the indian Penal Code (rape) should be interpreted to include a dead body and that the lack of consent from a deceased person should constitute rape. However, the supreme court reiterated that such an interpretation was beyond judicial purview and that it is only for parliament to address this gap.

While indian criminal law makes it plain that a dead corpse cannot be referred to as a human or person, the karnataka high court reaffirmed in its ruling that the statutory definition of rape and unnatural offenses only applies when the victim is a live person.
 
The high court ruled that the lack of laws criminalizing necrophilia prevented it from convicting the accused of rape, even though it acknowledged that having sex with a corpse is a form of necrophilia, a psychosexual disorder listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition.
 
Following the lead of nations like the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa, the high court also voiced concern about the vulnerability of dead bodies, especially in hospital mortuaries, and urged the central government to either add a suitable provision under the current laws or introduce a new provision explicitly penalizing necrophilia.
 
"It is high time for the central government, to maintain the right to dignity of the dead, to amend the provisions of Section 377 of IPC (unnatural offenses) to include the dead body of any man, woman, or animal, or to introduce a separate provision as an offense against a dead woman as necrophilia or sadism," it had said.

This opinion was supported by a chhattisgarh high court decision in december 2024, which declared that although raping a dead body is one of the most heinous crimes, it does not legally qualify as rape because the victim must be alive to be found guilty.
 
While acknowledging that the present legislation does not specify penalties for sexual assault on a corpse, the chhattisgarh high court emphasized that dignity and fair treatment apply to both the living and the dead.
 
 

 
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SIBY JEYYA

05/02/2025 09:33 AM