Published Paper Details:

Adultery is defined as a consensual extramarital sexual relationship that is viewed negatively on social, religious, moral, and/or earlier legal grounds. Since one can remember, sexual infidelity to one's spouse has been a widespread occurrence in human culture. Why is it so hard for us to be faithful to our spouses as humans? Although adultery is no longer a crime, it is still considered delinquent behavior because it goes against the social expectations that one is supposed to uphold. Throughout the last 158 years, it has been considered a crime, but since the Supreme Court's decision in Joseph Shine v. Union of India, adultery has been decriminalized and reduced to a civil wrong rather than a crime. This section gave husbands the authority to bring charges against their wives' adulterers while denying spouses the ability to file complaints against their husbands' adulteresses. To make section 497 gender-neutral the penalty was removed and was made only a civil wrong and not a penal offense. But, in vain this amendment could not bring a true sense of justice and morality. Letting go of infidelity unpunished results in a dysfunctional family structure. The partners and any children the couple may have may suffer long-term effects from infidelity. Children born out of such illicit relations do not have any legal recognition the society, and neither can claim any formal or legal right from their biological father or mother. Therefore, in the above context, the children are the ones who suffer the most in such situations. Prior to this, there have been many suggestions here to fore under various law commission reports to make the offense of infidelity gender-neutral by punishing the women who are equally involved in the act of infidelity. The forty-second Law Commission report in 1971 and Justice Malimath Committee in 2003 suggested the same but these suggestions were never implemented.