The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court in a recent judgment addressed a delicate matter while expanding the definition of “outraging the modesty of a woman”. The criminal revision application of Parmeshwar Dhage, the accused, who was convicted by the trial court for “touching the feet of a woman while she was asleep”, was set aside by a single judge bench.
Justice MG Sewlikar in the case of Parmeshwar Dhage vs the State of Maharashtra made a significant observation, stating that “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 Indian Penal Code 1860 makes it a punishable offence, as stated under Section 354: “Assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty.—Whoever assaults or uses criminal force to any woman, intending to outrage or knowing it to be likely that he will thereby outrage her modesty, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both.”
According to the facts of the case, around 11 pm on July 4, 2014, a 25-year-old married woman from the Jalna district in Maharashtra felt that someone was touching her feet. She awoke and found that Dhage was sitting near her feet on her bed. She shouted which woke up her grandmother-in-law and they raised an alarm.
While narrating the events of that night in the High Court, the woman said that only she and her grandmother-in-law were in the house as her husband had gone to another village. Around 8 pm, Dhage went to the woman’s house and inquired as to when her husband would be returning. She informed him that her husband would not be returning for the night. The same night, the woman closed the main door but didn’t bolt it. Both the women then went to sleep. A complaint was later lodged by the woman on July 5, 2014 at Partur police station in Maharashtra.
The Indian Penal Code doesn’t explain or elucidate on what it means by “modesty”. However, the apex court in the Rupan Deol Bajaj and Anr vs KPS Gill and Anr AIR 1996 has defined the term “modesty”. During the discussion in the case, the question of modesty arose under State of Punjab vs Major Singh, AIR 1967 SC 63, where the Supreme Court bench, comprising Justice RS Bachawat and Justice JR Mudholkar, while responding to the question as to whether a girl child of seven and half months old possesses “modesty” which could be outraged, said that whenever any act is done to or in the presence of any woman which is plainly suggestive of sex or any sexual act in consonance with the common notions of the mankind, that must fall within the mischief of Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code.
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