How exactly would you define sexual harassment? Well, whatever your opinion is, you’re right. But a recent ruling by the Bombay High Court made me ask that question.
It said that groping a child, and by extension, anybody, through their clothes does not constitute sexual harassment. Hmmm. The case that brought this issue up was that of a 39-year-old man who was found guilty of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old by touching her chest and trying to pull off her underwear in his home back in 2016. He was sentenced to three years in prison but later appealed to the High Court.
But in her judgement last week, the High Court judge, Pushpa Ganediwala, found him not guilty of sexual assault. According to her, the man had not removed the girl’s clothes and as such, there was no skin-to-skin contact ?♀Rather she sentenced the man to one year in prison on a lower count of molestation.
You can imagine what Indians across the country felt. So much fury was let loose as they all took to social media to protest the ruling. This was outrightly frustrating the efforts of campaigners against sexual harassment of women and children. And lower courts will now follow suit.
You still recall that highly publicised case in 2012 where a 23-year-old student was raped and murdered in a New Delhi bus. That case had attracted stricter penalties to rape cases. Despite that, other high-profile cases have come up like the rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl in the field and the rape of an 86-year-old woman while waiting for the milkman, all within the country.
Now for a High Court to undermine the severity of a sexual assault gives assaulters the impunity to go ahead with their crime. According to the director of the non-profits Centre for Social Research which is in the frontline of women’s rights advocacy in India, Rajana Kumari, the judgment is “shameful, outrageous, shocking and devoid of judicial prudence."
What can I say? ?♀
