Indian court rules that groping without undressing is not sexual assault

Indian court rules that groping without undressing is not sexual assault

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At a trial last week, Bombay Supreme Court judge Pushpa Ganediwala concluded that a 39-year-old man was not guilty of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl because he had not taken off his clothes, meaning that there was no skin on skin contact.

According to the case file, the man brought the child to his home on the pretext of giving him guava in December 2016. While there, he touched her chest and tried to remove her panties, according to the sentence.

He was found guilty of sexual assault and sentenced to three years in prison in a lower court, but later appealed to the High Court.

At her trial on January 19, Judge Ganediwala concluded that her act “would not fit the definition of ‘sexual assault’,” which carries a minimum prison sentence of three years, which can be extended to five years.

“Considering the severe nature of the punishment foreseen for the offense, in the opinion of this court, stricter evidence and serious allegations are needed,” she wrote. India’s 2012 Child Protection Act against Sexual Offenses does not explicitly state that skin-to-skin contact is necessary to constitute the crime of sexual assault.

Judge Ganediwala acquitted the accused of sexual assault, but sentenced him on lesser charges of sexual abuse and sentenced him to one year in prison.

“It is the basic principle of criminal jurisprudence that punishment for an offense is proportional to the seriousness of the crime,” she said.

Problem of sexual assault in India

The Indians turned to social media after the Bombay Supreme Court decision was released to question the logic of the court’s decision, which sets a new precedent. Other upper and lower courts across the country will now need to follow the decision of the Bombay High Court.

The National Commission for Women said he planned to mount a legal challenge to the sentence, which he said will have a “ripple effect on several provisions involving the safety and protection of women”.

Karuna Nundy, an attorney with India’s Supreme Court, the country’s highest court, asked that judges who handed down sentences “completely contrary to established law” and basic rights be retrained.

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“Trials like this contribute to impunity in crimes against girls”, she tweeted.

Ranjana Kumari, director of the nonprofit Center for Social Research, which defends women’s rights in India, said the sentence is “shameful, outrageous, shocking and devoid of judicial prudence”.

Sexual assault is a major problem in India, where sexual crimes are often brutal and widespread, but are often treated poorly by the country’s justice system. Based on official 2018 figures, a woman’s rape is reported every 16 minutes.
After a prominent case in 2012, when a 23-year-old student was raped and murdered on a New Delhi bus, legal reforms and more severe penalties were introduced.

These included expedited courts to move rape cases through the justice system quickly, an amended definition of rape to include anal and oral penetration, and the publication of new government guidelines aimed at ending the two-finger test that was supposed to assess whether a woman had sex recently.

But high-profile rape cases continued to make headlines. Last year, several cases sparked outrage, including the case of a 13-year-old girl who was raped and found strangled to death in a field, and an 86-year-old woman who was reportedly raped while waiting for the milkman.
Activists pointed to ongoing problems in the justice system. In India’s legal system, for example, sexually abusing a trans person carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison.

CNN’s Swati Gupta and Manveena Suri contributed reporting.

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