A married factory worker in Jalandhar, Punjab, was allegedly abducted and sexually assaulted overnight by four young women after being incapacitated with an unknown chemical spray under the guise of them asking for directions. The incident has reignited a fierce national debate among legal experts, rights advocates, and digital communities regarding India’s strictly gender-asymmetric adult sexual assault laws.
Under the newly implemented Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), rape is defined exclusively as an offence committed by a man against a woman. Consequently, the legal system cannot currently charge these female perpetrators with sexual assault, leaving a critical gap in protections for adult men, transgender individuals, and the LGBTQ+ community. Meanwhile, because the traumatised victim initially hesitated to formalise a police complaint out of profound social shame, public pressure is mounting on law enforcement to investigate the matter while systemic reforms are debated.
The Incapacitation and the Legal Black Hole
The details of the Jalandhar case are as harrowing as they are unusual. While heading home from his shift at a local leather factory, the victim was approached by four women in a white car requesting directional help. The interaction quickly turned predatory when the individuals used a chemical spray to disorient him. Forced into the vehicle and coerced into consuming alcohol, the man was held captive for nearly half a day, violated, and ultimately dumped at a secluded roadside.
However, because the statutory architecture of the BNS requires a male perpetrator and a female victim to qualify an act as rape, the core trauma of this crime cannot be legally registered as such. Prosecutors are instead left trying to assemble secondary criminal charges such as criminal abduction, wrongful confinement, and administering a stupefying substance. For the survivor, the message from the legal system is devastatingly clear: the sexual violation he endured does not legally exist.
The Historical Resistance to Gender-Neutrality
This legislative gap is not an accidental oversight but a persistent structural choice. In the wake of the 2012 Delhi gang-rape, the landmark Justice Verma Committee explicitly recommended that India’s sexual assault laws be made completely gender-neutral to protect all human beings regardless of their identity.
Yet, when Parliament amended the laws, they deliberately rejected gender-neutral provisions for adult victims due to deep-seated socio-legal concerns regarding the fear of counter-claims. Lawmakers and various women’s rights collectives heavily feared that gender-neutral rape laws could be weaponised by abusive spouses or conservative families. In a society where women already struggle to report domestic abuse or marital cruelty, there was a significant concern that perpetrators would file retaliatory rape charges against these women to intimidate them into silence and withdraw their genuine complaints.
Furthermore, the decision was shaped by the stark reality of systemic harm across the country. Proponents of gender-specific laws argue that statistical data in India overwhelmingly shows women facing a disproportionate, pervasive threat of patriarchal violence, making unique protections absolutely vital. From their perspective, the law must remain asymmetric because the social reality is fundamentally unequal; they argue that diluting the gender-specific focus of rape laws could weaken the legal shield necessary to combat systemic crimes against women.
The Contradiction in India’s Own Legal Codes
The reluctance to protect adult male and non-binary survivors creates an unsettling legal paradox when compared to how India protects children. Under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act of 2012, India possesses a highly progressive, entirely gender-neutral shield.Under POCSO, any boy or girl under the age of 18 is equally protected from sexual abuse, and a perpetrator can be of any gender.
This creates a stark legal cliff: a 17-year-old male survivor has access to robust, specialised statutory support, but the exact same victim turning 18 suddenly finds himself entirely abandoned by adult sexual assault legislation. Furthermore, this gap completely isolates transgender individuals and queer communities who, following the repeal of Section 377, are left without any clear legal recourse when facing non-consensual sexual violations.
The Logical Indian’s Perspective
At The Logical Indian, we believe that pain, trauma, and violation do not carry a gender. Violence is an absolute evil, and an institutional framework that measures a victim’s right to justice based on their biology fundamentally fails the test of basic human empathy and equality. Acknowledging that adult men, transgender persons, and queer individuals can be survivors of sexual assault does not diminish or dilute our collective fight against the structural violence faced by women.
Justice and kindness are not finite resources; protecting one vulnerable human being never requires stripping protection from another. We must cultivate a society grounded in deep empathy and harmony, where no survivor is forced into silence by legal erasure or toxic social stigma. It is time for a mature, compassionate legislative dialogue that introduces balanced safeguards against the misuse of laws while ensuring that every citizen has a right to be heard, protected, and healed.
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