When the Law Leaves Men Behind:Male Sexual Assault, the Death of Section 377, and the Silence of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita

Abstract

On the night of June 17, 2026, a thirty-year-old man undergoing chemotherapy for bone cancer was stopped at a police checkpoint in Kurukshetra, Haryana. What followed—alleged stripping, targeted assault on his cancer-affected leg, and sodomy inside a police station—should have been prosecuted as sexual assault. It was not. The First Information Report (FIR) registered against the three accused—ASI Sanjeev Kumar, ASI Rajender Kumar, and Home Guard Sumit—invokes only Section 114 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, which pertains to simple hurt. The reason is both simple and staggering: there is no provision under Indian criminal law today that criminalises the sexual assault of an adult male. When the BNS replaced the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in July 2024, Section 377—the only provision that, after the Supreme Court's partial reading-down in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India (2018), still criminalised non-consensual carnal intercourse against adult men—was deleted in its entirety. Nothing was put in its place. This article examines how that legislative void was created, what it means for male victims, why the omission was not accidental, and what India must now do to ensure that criminal law protects every person, regardless of gender.