Under Exception 2 to Section 63 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (codifying the Supreme Court's…

Exception 2 to Section 63 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 expressly provides that "Sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under eighteen years of age, is not rape." This codifies the Supreme Court's judgment in Independent Thought v. Union of India (2017), which had read down the lower age threshold in the former marital exception (Exception 2 to Section 375 IPC) to eighteen years to harmonise it with the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 and Articles 14, 15(3), and 21 of the Constitution.