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Adultery and Court

law: A general view of the Supreme court of India is pictured in New Delhi on September 27, according to Toronto Star. Adultery is no longer a crime, India's top court ruled Thursday, declaring a colonial-era law that punished the offence with jail time unconstitutional and discriminatory against women. In the latest decision Thursday, Chief Justice Dipak Misra and the rest of the five-member court struck down a 158-year-old law that treated adultery in certain cases as a criminal offence punishable by up to five years in prison. The more than century-old law prescribed that any man who slept with a married woman without her husband's permission had committed adultery, a crime carrying a five-year prison term in the conservative country. Adultery can still be grounds for divorce in India, the verdict said, but a criminal penalty violated women's protection to equal rights under the law. MONEY SHARMA / AFP/GETTY IMAGES The court called the law, which did not allow wives to prosecute adulterous husbands, unconstitutional and noted that a husband is not the master of woman. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.