The Aurangabad Bench of the Bombay High Court has held that touching the feet or any part of a woman’s body without her consent, “that too in the dead of the night by a stranger”, amounts to outraging her modesty, dismissing the petition of a 36-year-old man that challenged his conviction.
The Justice MG Sewlikar-led bench said that the behaviour of the accused “smacked of sexual intent” and upheld his jail term.
The complainant, from Maharashtra’s Jalna district, had said in her FIR that the accused touched her feet without her knowledge one night in July 2014 when her husband was not at home and she was in the house with her grandmother-in-law.
The court was told that the accused, her neighbour, first asked the woman when her husband would return home and then around 11 pm she woke up sensing that someone was touching her feet and found that it was her neighbour. As she screamed in fear, the accused fled she screamed after her grandmother-in-law woke up.
The defence denied the allegations and first claimed that the accused was not present at the spot of the incident, then indicated that the accused entered with consent as the complainant and her grandmother-in-law didnt lock the door from inside despite being alone in the house.
He further claimed that the accused had merely tried to touch the feet of the woman, denying sexual intent.
The court was dissatisfied with the defence side’s answer as to why the accused was present in the complainant’s house in the middle of the night.
After hearing the submissions of both the sides and examining the material produced before the court, the bench observed: “It is clear that the act of the applicant was capable of shocking the sense of decency of any woman. In the case at hand, the applicant was sitting at the feet of the victim and had touched her feet and was sitting on her cot. This behaviour smacks of sexual intent. Otherwise, there was no reason for the applicant to be in the house of the victim at such an odd hour of the night.”
The court further held that touching “any part of the body of a woman without her consent” that late at night would amount to violation of a woman’s modesty.
The trial court had convicted the man under Sections 451 (house trespass) and 354A (sexual harassment) of IPC and sentenced him to one-year imprisonment.
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