The Age of Consent Act
The Age of Consent Act was a legislation enacted in 1891, on 19 March, in British India, to raise the age of sexual consent from ten years to twelve for all girls, married or not. Thus, violating this law meant committing a rape. The triggering factor of this law is in 1889, when a girl just above ten was brutally raped by her husband and died. Lansdowne and the colonial government were embarrassed and had to do something, without abolishing child marriage, which was to firmly incorporated into Indian culture. However, this law raised a deep anti-colonial sentiment, with large-scale street demonstrations, because it violated a Hindu ritual: when the wife reaches puberty, within sixteen days she must cohabit with her husband. Yet with the new law, in this case, the husband will be classified as a rapist. It was in fact a mixture of anti-colonial nationalism and orthodoxy. Nevertheless, this law is far from being totally followed. During her life, Haimabati Sen faced a situation in which a girl of eleven was raped by her husband, was hemorrhaging, and died, but the Civil Surgeon wrote a false death certificate saying she was fourteen and not died from a rape, to get around the Age of Consent Act (p.193-194).
Sources:
Heimsath, Charles H. (1962), "The Origin and Enactment of the Indian Age of Consent Bill, 1891", Journal of Asian Studies, JSTOR 2050879.
Short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=SbLrt1SDKO4