Criminal Law

Yusuf Abdul Aziz v. State of Bombay

AIR 1954 SC 321

Facts

Yusuf Abdul Aziz was prosecuted under the former Section 497 IPC for adultery.
The old provision punished a man who had sexual intercourse with another man’s wife without the husband’s consent or connivance.
The married woman was expressly exempted from punishment, even as an abettor.
Yusuf challenged the constitutionality of the provision.
He argued that it discriminated solely on the ground of sex because:
the man was punishable;
the woman participating in the same act was immune.
The State defended the exemption as constitutionally permitted protection for women.

Article 14 permits reasonable classification where:
there is an intelligible differentia;
the differentia has a rational connection with the law’s object.
Article 15(1) prohibits discrimination solely on grounds including sex.
Article 15(3) permits the State to make special provisions for women and children.
At that time, the Court interpreted the female exemption as a protective special provision within Article 15(3).

The Court recognised that the provision treated men and women differently.
However, it reasoned that the Constitution expressly allowed special provisions for women.
The exemption from punishment was viewed as legislative protection rather than unconstitutional hostility toward men.
The Court accepted the then-prevailing legislative assumption that the woman involved in adultery should be treated as a victim rather than an offender.
It rejected the argument that Article 15(3) permitted only beneficial welfare measures and not immunity from punishment.
Because the exemption was considered a special provision for women, it survived the sex-discrimination challenge.
The Court also treated the classification as falling within the legislature’s policy choice.
It did not examine the provision through later-developed concepts of:
sexual autonomy;
dignity;
marital equality;
patriarchal ownership.
Those omissions became central decades later in Joseph Shine.
Therefore, the case is important primarily as the historical constitutional defence of the former adultery offence, not as present law.

The Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of Section 497.
It held that exemption of women from punishment was protected by Article 15(3).
This position no longer represents current law: Joseph Shine later declared Section 497 unconstitutional and rejected its paternalistic foundation.
Use this case for: the historical view that immunity of women from adultery prosecution was a permissible special provision under Article 15(3).