In June 2024, a 23-year-old man in Uttar Pradesh was gang-raped by four men. He did not survive the aftermath. Took his own life.
At that time, the police could still file a First Information Report (FIR) for his case because Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was still technically in effect.
Barely. Imperfectly.. Still in effect. Seven days later, on July 1st, 2024, everything changed. India completely repealed the IPC. Replaced it with the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. By doing this, it quietly decided that what happened to that 23-year-old man is no longer recognised as rape by the law.
Not "less serious." Not "harder to prove." Non-existent. If the same crime happened today, the police cannot register an FIR for rape. It’s not because the evidence isn’t there. It's because the law doesn’t recognise it anymore.
Section 63 of the BNS defines rape as an act done by a man against a woman. That’s the context. A man. A woman. Nothing more. If the victim is a man or a transgender person, the law does not acknowledge them. He is nobody.
So what happens to him? He gets classified as "hurt." Grievous hurt." Bailable. In some cases, non-cognizable. A maximum penalty of two years less for an act that would have been called rape and punished with ten years to life if only the victim had been born a woman.
Let that sink in for a moment. The crime doesn’t change. The trauma doesn’t change. Only the gender of the victim changes, and suddenly the law has nothing to say.
This isn’t an oversight that went unnoticed. The warnings about this issue date further than the BNS itself. After the 2012 Delhi gang-rape case, the Justice J.S. Verma Committee was formed to revise India’s sexual violence laws. In its 2013 report, it recommended gender-neutral definitions of rape, noting that men, boys and transgender individuals are at risk of sexual assault in significant numbers. That recommendation was ignored back then too, with officials claiming that gender-neutral language might weaken protections for women. A decade later, when the BNS was drafted, similar warnings resurfaced. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs consulted stakeholders and submitted its report in November 2023. It clearly stated that to align with the BNS’s goal of moving toward gender- offenses it was essential to reintroduce and keep Section 377. Not optional. Essential, according to the committee.
The government reviewed that recommendation. Rejected it.
Within Parliament, people noticed. MP Asaduddin Owaisi asked whether only women get stalked or raped. Has anyone considered men and transgender individuals? He was laughed at. The bill still passed.
Here’s the part that should infuriate you more than the omission itself: the BNS did update its language in areas. Crimes that used to begin with "a man" were changed to start with "whoever” an intentional gender-neutral word introduced by the same lawmakers who wrote this Sanhita. In every rewritten section, the victim remains a woman. "She." "Her." Every time.
The legislature clearly knows how to draft a gender law. It did it. Just not for the crime that needed it the most.
This isn’t a hypothetical gap. In 2025, the Delhi High Court considered a Public Interest Litigation about this flaw in the law. In 2026, a custodial sodomy case from Kurukshetra, Haryana made the issue impossible to ignore. Police were accused of an act everyone would label as rape if a woman had been the victim. The FIR filed was for simple hurt. Bailable. Right to bail. A maximum sentence of one year. A fine of ten thousand rupees.
A boy under eighteen raped by a man is fully protected under the POCSO Act regardless of his gender. When he turns eighteen, he ceases to exist as a victim of rape in the eyes of Indian law. Nothing about what could happen to him changes overnight. The law’s readiness to name it changes.
And the third gender is excluded entirely; the BNS never included them in the rape provisions at any age.
This isn’t an issue India is facing alone. The UK changed its rape law in 1994 to recognise that the victim does not have to be a woman. It went further with the Sexual Offences Act in 2003. The United States revised its definition in 2012 to replace "woman" with "person," specifically so male and transgender victims wouldn’t fall through the gaps. Canada amended its Criminal Code as far back as 1983. None of these countries reported that protecting women became harder when they also began protecting men. The two are not in competition. India’s lawmakers had more than three decades of successful examples to draw from and still chose not to.
According to Article 14 of the Indian Constitution, all citizens must be treated equally under the law. Article 15 prohibits discrimination based on sex. Article 21 discusses citizens’ right to life. A law that recognises rape when the victim is a woman while telling men and transgender individuals that the same act against them is merely "hurt " does not provide equal protection. It creates a system. It was written into law despite explicit warnings.
In this country, we often discuss the need to modernise. We talk about moving past times. The IPC was 163 years old, created by a lawmaker for a British empire, and everyone agreed that it was time to move on. So we did. We created something, gave it a Sanskrit name and called it a fresh start.
Then we used that start to make male and transgender rape victims worse off than they were under a 19th-century colonial code.
That is not modernisation. That is a step backwards dressed up in a coat.
So here’s a question for you to consider: if a man is raped in India tomorrow, who does he call? Not rhetorically. Literally. Which police station takes that FIR, under which section for what crime? Now there isn’t a clear answer. There’s "hurt." There’s silence. There’s a suicide in Uttar Pradesh that the old law, despite its flaws, could at least name and a new law that cannot.
We swapped out a colonial-era statute for a 21st-century one. Somehow ended up with less protection for a whole group of survivors than we had before. If that doesn’t concern you, I encourage you to reflect on why it doesn’t. If it does, then the next question is about what you will do regarding a law that was warned about in writing but chose to ignore that warning anyway.
References:
- Business Standard. “Three proposed criminal laws are much-needed reforms: Parliamentary panel.” November 10, 2023.
https://www.business-standard.com - Change.org. “Make India’s Rape Laws Gender-Neutral in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.” Petition, 2024.
https://www.change.org - Kautilya Society, NUSRL Ranchi. “Revising Section 63 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita to Make it Gender Neutral.” September 2025.
https://kautilyasocietynusrl.in - Legal Blur. “Gender Justice under the BNS 2023.” https://legalblur.com
- Legal Service India. “Gender Neutrality in Indian Rape Laws.” September 2025.
https://www.legalserviceindia.com - LHSS Collective. “Gender-Neutral Rape Laws in India: Limitations of the BNS.” May 2024.
https://lhsscollective.in - Outlook India. “Gender Neutrality Of Laws Relating To Sexual Offences.” July 2024.
https://www.outlookindia.com - Pahuja Law Academy. “Gender Neutrality in Rape Laws: Analysing the Missed Opportunity in BNS and its Implications for Gender Justice.”
https://www.pahujalawacademy.com - PRS Legislative Research. “The Bharatiya Nyaya (Second) Sanhita, 2023.” Bill Track.
https://prsindia.org - ThePrint. “Haryana cops accused of custodial sodomy but FIR only for simple hurt: The BNS blind spot.” 2026.
https://theprint.in - Legal Eagle Web. “The Absence of Rape Protections for Men in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita” (citing The Hindu, Dutta, Alisha, “New Criminal Laws Bill has no section on rape of men, transgender people,” June 23, 2024).
https://legaleagleweb.com - The Lawway with Lawyers. “Rape Under Section 63 of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.” May 2024.
https://thelawwaywithlawyers.com - The Lawway with Lawyers. “Male Rape Victims: Recognising Invisible Victims and the Need for Legal Protection in India.” April 2026.
https://thelawwaywithlawyers.com - The Leaflet. “Gender-neutral laws for sexual offences: A gap that has not been bridged.” November 2024.
https://theleaflet.in - The News Minute. “New criminal law Bill omits Section 377: How this impacts men and trans persons.” December 14, 2023.
https://www.thenewsminute.com - BNB Legal. “Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023 Fails Male and Transgender.” July 2024.
https://bnblegal.com - Indian Journal of Law and Legal Research. “Gender Neutrality in Rape Laws: A Comparative Study of India, the United Kingdom, and Canada.” 2026.
https://www.ijllr.com - India Legal. “Gender Neutral Laws.” April 2023.
https://indialegallive.com. . .