Groping Without ‘Skin-to-Skin’ Contact Not Sexual Assault
The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court has ruled that groping without ‘skin to skin’ contact is not sexual assault.
In 2016 a man took a 12-year-old girl to his house on the pretext of giving her Guava. He then pressed her breast and attempted to remove her salwar. At that point in time, the mother reached the spot and rescued her daughter. An FIR was registered almost immediately. The case was going on in the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court. The prosecution examined five witnesses, the mother, the 12-year-old girl and a neighbour who had heard the child scream and two police officers. Justice Pushpa Ganediwala of the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court said, there must be physical contact “i.e skin-to-skin contact with sexual intent without penetration”. The act must have been committed with the intention of having sex and involved touching the private parts of a child or making the child touch the private organ of the accused. Then it is called sexual assault.
If the person gropes a child with no skin-to-skin contact, then it won’t be called sexual assault. The court said that the man pressed the girl’s breasts without removing her top. Hence, it can not be sexual assault.The court sentenced him to one year of imprisonment for outraging a woman’s modesty and for wrongfully forcing her into a room. Many on social media have expressed anger towards the female judge for pronouncing such a verdict.
