Touching woman without consent is violation of her modesty: Bombay HC
The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court recently ruled that a stranger touching any part of woman’s body without her consent during the dead hour (midnight) amounts to violation of her modesty.
The single-judge bench of Justice Mukund G Sewlikar was hearing a 36-year-old Jalna resident’s plea challenging his conviction by a sessions court for outraging the modesty of the victim. The applicant, Parmeshwar Dhage, was charged and convicted first by the magistrate’s court and then by the sessions court under sections 451 (house-trespass in order to commit offence punishable with imprisonment) and 354-A (i) (physical contact and advances involving unwelcome and explicit sexual overtures).
According to the victim’s plaint, on July 4, 2014, she and her grandmother-in-law were alone at home when Parmeshwar Dhage visited their house around 8pm. Dhage asked when would her husband return. The victim said her husband would not be coming back at night.
The accused went back to the victim’s house around 11 pm while she was sleeping. The main door of the victim’s house was shut but not bolted from inside. She realised that someone was touching her feet and woke up shouting. She found the accused sitting at her feet on her cot. The accused ran away when the two women made noise. The victim then phoned her husband and narrated the incident. The next morning the husband returned and the victim lodged a police complaint.
Also read: SC sets aside Bombay HC order on ‘skin-to-skin’ sexual assault interpretation
Dhage’s lawyer argued that since the door was not bolted from inside, it should be looked at as a consent from the victim for the applicant to enter the house. The lawyer also said that the applicant had only touched the victim’s feet without having any sexual intent. The lawyer asked why the victim has not explained a delay of 12 hours in lodging an FIR.
Justice Sewlikar said: “It is clear that the act of the applicant was capable of shocking the sense of decency of any woman. In the case at hand, the applicant was sitting at the feet of the victim and had touched her feet and was sitting on her cot. This behaviour smacks of sexual intent. Otherwise, there was no reason for the applicant to be in the house of the victim at such an odd hour of the night.”
The judge said the applicant had no explanation to offer on why he went to the victim’s house so late at night. The court also ruled that the victim waiting for her husband to come home before she could lodge an FIR “cannot be faulted with”.
The HC judge ruled: “Touching any part of the body of a woman without her consent, that too in the dead hour of the night, by a stranger amounts to violation of modesty of a woman. The applicant did not enter the house of the victim with any sublime motive. He had ensured in the evening from the victim that her husband would not be present in the house at night…This clearly indicates that the applicant had gone there with sexual intent and violated the modesty of the informant.”
A few months back, Justice Pushpa Ganediwala of the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court had acquitted an accused in a separate case stating that groping a minor’s breast without skin-to-skin contact cannot be termed as sexual assault as defined under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
The infamously christened ‘skin to skin’ judgment of the Bombay High Court was challenged in the Supreme Court, which on November 18, set aside the HC verdict clearly saying that skin-to-skin contact was a necessary ingredient for punishing persons accused of sexually assaulting minors. The apex court stated that the most important ingredient in convicting sexual offenders under POCSO Act is “sexual intent and not skin-to-skin”.
