The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a Madhya Pradesh High Court decision in which the court ordered a man convicted of sexual misconduct to tie a “rakhi” on the accuser as a condition of bail.
The decision came after Supreme Court lawyer Aparna Bhat and eight other women challenged the Madhya Pradesh High Court’s July 2020 order, according to Bar and Bench. The court had ordered the man accused of breaching a woman’s modesty to come before the claimant so that she could tie a “rakhi” on his wrist and make him qualify for bail.
Though overturning the decision, the Supreme Court released guidelines for lower courts to obey when dealing with bail requests in cases including violence against women.
Aparna argued in its petition to the Supreme Court that “such rulings from High Courts will end up trivializing such heinous offense and that there is a clear possibility that such observations may result in normalizing what is essentially a crime and has been acknowledged as such by the law.”
The Supreme Court also served a notice on Attorney General K K Venugopal on October 16, 2020, to solicit his thoughts and recommendations on the matter. The AG then filed written statements on the measures that should be taken to correct judges’ lack of empathy in cases of sexual harassment. Judges who are “old school” and “patriarchal” in their worldview, according to Venugopal, should be sensitized so that they do not pass directives objectifying women in situations of sexual harassment.
Absurd statements like these from such a prestigious pillar of democracy make women of the country even more worried, the judiciary which was made to fight unjust is now speaking the language of the embedded patriarchy.
Recently Bombay High court has made almost the equally absurd remark by stating On 19 January 2021, a single-judge bench of Justice Pushpa V. Ganediwala said that touching a minor girl’s breast without removing the top would not fall within the definition of sexual assault, but would be termed as outraging the modesty of a woman under the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
