Kiranjit Ahluwalia, an Indian woman residing in the UK with her husband was serially abused and sexually molested by her husband for a continuous period of ten years until she was no longer able to take it and decided to burn the husband to death in 1989.
Through this case of Kiranjit Ahluwalia, the court was able to set the law in motion subsequently leading to the passing of the law stating that marital rape is statutory rape. This means that a husband who forced himself on his wife thereby having sex with her without her consent can be prosecuted for rape and the same goes for a wife that forces herself on the husband.
After Kiranjit Ahluwalia set her husband ablaze thereby burning him to death, She was subsequently arrested and charged with murder but she raised the defense of provocation claiming that her husband had abused her for the past 10 years thereby “raising the possibility of a slow-burn anger that led to her snapping and setting her husband ablaze”. This defense failed and she was convicted of murder but on appeal, the judgment was reversed and the conviction for murder was swapped to a conviction for manslaughter, although the reversal of the judgment was not based on her defense of provocation or slow burn of anger but on other reasons.
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This case has remained one of the notable cases in English jurisprudence, it has gained popularity from the fact that the defendant is said to have been serially abused by the partner until she couldn’t take it anymore and retaliated thereby burning him to death. Some persons have argued using this case as a basis that accumulated anger or grievance is enough ground to raise the defense of provocation and that an abusive husband deserves whatever he gets in return.
This case also gained popularity by the reason of some lawyers using it as a judicial precedent for marital rape. Through this case, the court acknowledged the fact that a spouse can rape his or her spouse even when they are statutorily married. The old rule was that once you are married to a spouse, he or she can have sex with you any time even if you consent to it or not, but through this case, the new rule of marital rape got a judicial acknowledgement. A year after this case, marital rape was declared rape in England in 1991.