Ahmedabad Times

The Supreme Court docket on Friday upheld the conviction of a person from Tamil Nadu for felony intimidation after he allegedly threatened a lady with importing a video of her bathing on social media, holding it to be a “risk to impute unchastity” to a lady. The highest courtroom additional stated {that a} girl’s chastity must be seen within the modified perspective of sexual autonomy, dignity and privateness.

The bench of justices Sanjay Karol and N Kotiswar Singh was listening to the plea of a person who promised to marry his girlfriend and established sexual relations however later snubbed her demand to get married. When she insisted, he threatened to make her video of getting a shower public which he had secretly filmed on his cell phone. For the reason that video couldn’t be recovered, the accused challenged his conviction underneath part 506 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) that punishes felony intimidation. His conviction underneath this provision was upheld by the trial courtroom and excessive courtroom towards which he approached the highest courtroom.

“We’re of the opinion that within the gentle of the modified perspective of ladies’s sexuality, the act of video-recording the sufferer in a unadorned state whereas she was taking a shower and the risk to add it on digital social media might be construed to be an act amounting to a risk to impute unchastity throughout the that means of Half II of Part 506 IPC,” the bench stated.

The courtroom stated that with proper to privateness now a basic proper underneath Article 21 of the Structure of India, ‘unchastity’ must be learn as an motion that interferes with the privateness and autonomy of 1’s personal consensual sexual actions. “Any such interference could be a violation of the constitutional understanding of each privateness and dignity underneath Article 21,” the judgment stated, including, “Any unwarranted interference with such sexual autonomy might be stated to impute unchastity, insofar because it prevents the affected individual from controlling the knowledge and selections that she chooses to make with respect to her sexual life.”

The courtroom stated that such reprehensible act which seeks to decrease or tarnish the dignity of a lady referring to her sexual autonomy and id, which she seeks to jealously guard, might be stated to be an assault on her chastity amounting to imputing unchastity to the girl.

Additional, if acute disgrace, misery, and embarrassment are visited upon a lady because of worry that her nude image could be exhibited to the general public, there might be little doubt that such an act would definitely be a trigger for alarm, the courtroom stated, whereas holding that the offence underneath part 506 is clearly made out.

Within the current case, the courtroom stated that it was immaterial if the video was really recovered by the prosecution because the offence should be seen from the angle of the sufferer and never the accused. The courtroom stated, “The mere risk that the appellant would add the video of the prosecutrix in a nude state on social media is kind of a distressing and scary proposition for a girl.”

Justice Singh, writing the judgment for the bench, stated, “Within the age of the web, the dignity of an individual is intrinsically tied to their individual and fame as perceived on-line. Any non-public content material circulated on-line with intent to negatively influence their fame might be understood to trigger hurt to 1’s fame.” Such content material within the possession of one other individual can instantly be “warped and altered” to create sexual connotations in a fashion the place the sufferer is not going to be in a situation to regulate the narrative round it, the judgment stated.

Seen on this perspective, the courtroom stated, “any consensual sexual act is one which a person, extra notably a lady would moderately wish to hold non-public and retain autonomy over, and is, subsequently, an act that deserves safety.”

The courtroom concluded that chastity is to not be thought-about purely from an ethical perspective targeted on advantage alone however needs to be seen from the prism of dignity and autonomy of the person girl to resolve her sexual preferences and habits, and empowering her to reprobate what isn’t fascinating and approbate what is appropriate to her.

“This autonomy to resolve what is appropriate or not is to be primarily based on interior self-determination and never dictated by exterior societal norms which had been the figuring out issue for hundreds of years..Chastity, thus, needs to be decided not solely by societal values but in addition primarily based on her particular person sensitivities as regards her sexuality,” the order stated.

The FIR on this case was registered by the sufferer girl in 2015 and the accused was sentenced to endure three years imprisonment for the offence of felony intimidation each by the trial courtroom in 2017 and the Madras excessive courtroom in 2024. Contemplating the time lapse, the highest courtroom allowed the person to be launched primarily based on the sentence already undergone.