HC: Words, gestures in email can insult woman’s modesty Court Keeps Pace With Tech, Addresses New Challenges

HC: Words, gestures in email can insult woman’s modesty Court Keeps Pace With Tech, Addresses New Challenges

Swati.Deshpande@timesofindia.com 

Mumbai : An email would amount to an utterance, “gesture” and “exhibit” — words used in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) to define what constitutes an act intended to offend a woman’s privacy and dignity — held Bombay HC in a judgment pronounced Wednesday. 

Words and gestures communicated via email would fall under the ambit of offence under IPC Section 509 that deals with words, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman, ruled the HC bench of Justices Ajay Gadkari and Neela Gokhale.

 The ruling came as HC granted partial relief to a Mumbai resident and quashed part of a 2009 FIR against him registered with the cyber call for alleged sexual assault and criminal intimidation of a woman, who is now over 70 years old. HC, though, did not quash the part of the FIR that invoked prosecution for offence intended to invade a woman’s privacy and outrage her modesty under Section 509 and Section 67 of Information Technology Act (publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form), based on emails to third persons. 

The emails, HC said, “are a personal attack on her dignity, poise and self-esteem”. Interpreting Section 509, HC said, “Insult can man ifest as an intrusion upon the woman’s privacy... encroaching upon her personal space or violating her sense of privacy intentionally, in a manner that affronts her modesty.” “The purpose of law is not to allow the offender to sneak out of the meshes of law,” ruled HC. It said “intent” is the linchpin of the offence and opined the emails intr uded on the woman’s privacy and “demonstrate his intent”. There were allegations of emails containing the woman’s personal details being shared. HC, invoking SC’s constitutional bench judgment on privacy, said, “Sharing such details... especially  the residents of the same Society who she is likely to see frequently and without her consent is an affront to her personal dignity.

” Words used in the email about the woman may tend to deprave and corrupt persons who read it, said HC, as it said some could “conjure” an image of her. In 2011, the man petitioned HC to have the FIR and case quashed, arguing it was out of “vengeance” over animosity between the two. HC did not accept his arguments, stating, “If such narrow interpretation is accepted, many a man will walk away, unhindered by consequences merely by shooting emails or using social media to malign a woman and outrage her modesty... Modern technology makes such manner of perpetrating the offence verily real.”