NEW DELHI — India’s top court Thursday struck down a 158-year-old law that punished people for having extramarital affairs, effectively decriminalizing adultery.

The verdict is the latest in a string of progressive judgments from India’s top court. Judges also decriminalized homosexuality and curbed the usage of a government biometric database by private companies in September, acknowledging arguments from privacy activists.

“It’s time to say that husband is not the master of wife,” said Chief Justice Dipak Misra, delivering the verdict. “Legal sovereignty of one sex over the other sex is wrong.”

Married women in India face huge pressure to limit contact with men other than their husbands. They are often restricted by family members to dress conservatively or remain inside the home in India’s deeply conservative society.

Until Thursday, Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code gave a maximum sentence of five years to anyone who had sex with a married woman, “without the consent or connivance” of her husband. The married woman was exempt from punishment, but her partner was not. The partners of adulterous married men, meanwhile, did not face equal consequences under the law.

The law was used as a blackmail tool to keep women in unhappy marriages or prevent them from claiming alimony in divorce proceedings.

“It was an outdated law which should have been removed long back,” Rekha Sharma, chairwoman of the National Commission for Women, told Asian News International.