CHENNAI: A year ago, the Supreme Court ruled that adultery is not a crime. And within a year a study conducted by Gleeden - a website for

who want to engage in extramarital relationships - revealed that its members in India have swelled by 734%.

Without the fear of any legal repercussions for cheating on their partners many, who earlier resisted the temptation, have become more open to it, the study revealed. "Gleeden had a user base of around 2.5 lakh users and now there are more than six lakh users," says Solene Paillet, marketing specialist for Gleeden. "Of the six lakh, 36,000 are from Chennai. The ratio of men to women on Gleeden's site remained at 70:30."

The survey was conducted in Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru and Pune with a combined sample size of 10,000 individuals. While the website was launched in 2009 in France, the app has been available worldwide since 2012.

The study shows residents of cosmopolitan cities are more open to committing infidelity, probably because households in large cities are less traditional and nuclear families have replaced joint families.

According to the study, Indian male users search mostly for women aged between 25 and 30, while women prefer older partners, aged 30 to 40. "Also, men are 'open to everything' and mostly look for 'anything exciting', but Indian women are more cautious and mostly prefer 'virtual' exchanges," Paillet said.

With SC decriminalising homosexuality a year ago, the number of users looking for same sex relationships has also increased.

"We did witness an increase of same sex encounters during the past year (+45%), which means that people now feel free to ... pursue homosexual or bisexual encounters outside wedlock," said Paillet, adding that, on Gleeden worldwide, 12% subscribers are married people looking for an extramarital exchange with a person of the same sex. "Of this 12%, majority are women. ... In India, only 3% of married subscribers selected 'homosexual' as their sexual orientation, and 1% 'bisexual'."

Gleeden says it takes stringent measures to ensure there is no data breach. "Anonymity and

are keywords. We don't keep any information about our members, such as payment information and names," Paillet said.