Adultery is no longer a crime in India even though, ‘without a shadow of doubt’, it can be grounds for divorce, the Supreme Court said today, scrapping a 158-year law that punished a man for an affair but not the woman, treating her as property.

‘The husband is not the master of the wife,’ said five senior most Supreme Court judges, unanimously backing gender justice and calling out the Victorian adultery law — Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code — as arbitrary, reports the NDTV.

India’s law punishes any man who has an affair with a woman ‘without the consent or connivance of’ her husband, with five years in jail or fine or both. There is no punishment for the woman, who is seen as the victim.

‘The wife can’t be treated as chattel and it’s time to say that husband is not the master of woman,’ said the Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra, adding, ‘there can’t be any social licence which destroys a home.’

The judges noted that most countries had abolished laws against adultery. Making adultery a crime is retrograde and would mean ‘punishing unhappy people’, said Justice Misra.

As he began reading out the verdict, the Chief Justice remarked that the beauty of the constitution is it includes ‘the I, me and you’ and ‘any law which affects individual dignity, equity of women in a civilised society invites the wrath of the Constitution.’

In hearings, the centre had defended the law saying adultery must remain a crime so that the sanctity of marriage can be protected. The top court had then questioned how the law preserved the ‘sanctity’ of marriage when the extra-marital affair becomes non-punishable if the woman’s husband stands by her.

The Chief Justice said today that adultery might not be the cause of an unhappy marriage, it could be the result of an unhappy marriage.

‘In case of adultery, criminal law expects people to be loyal which is a command which gets into the realm of privacy,’ the judges felt.

Last year, in response to the petition challenging the law, the Supreme Court had said it treats a woman as her husband’s subordinate and time had come for society to realise that a woman is as equal to a man in every respect.