The Bombay high court (HC) on June 16 declared that casually touching a colleague does not constitute a case of outraging the modesty of a woman. This declaration came in light of a case of a principal of an ashram school in Maharashtra, who was booked for touching the hands of a teacher in the class.
In the teacher’s criminal prosecution, she alleged that the principal, a 46-year-old man, touched her hands while assuring her that he would clear all her pending medical and leave allowance bills and begged her not to complain against him to the school trustees. Soon after that, the teacher approached the Bembali police in Osmanabad on September 26, 2018, and the principal was duly booked under Section 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The case has been dropped after the court order concluded that the case is “insufficient” to attract Section 354.
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In the past, we have seen similar pronouncements by the Indian judiciary bodies, such as in 2017, when the Delhi HC passed a judgement saying that not all unwelcome physical contact, even though deplorable, constitutes sexual harassment. This happened after a scientist at the Central Road Research Institute in New Delhi grabbed lab material from his female colleague’s hands and pushed her out of the room.
The Bombay HC order also comes at a time when India, especially its women, are scrutinising India’s laws against sexual harassment in the aftermath of #MeToo, and the idea of intent and what constitutes crossing the line is still pretty much in the grey area. Just last week, the case that triggered the #MeToo movement in the country last year—in which actress Tanushree Dutta accused her co-star Nana Patekar of molesting and harassing her in 2008 —was recently closed by the Mumbai Police, while giving the accused Patekar a clean chit on grounds that there is no “evidence” to prove otherwise.
So while post-#MeToo India copes with the ambiguous territory of sexual harassment, it’s worth wondering if Bombay HC’s declaration gives more definition to understanding what sexual harassment is, or makes it easier for the accused to get away with bad behaviour.
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