Consent is Supreme

The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court recently held in a case that touching the feet of a woman by a stranger without her consent amounts to outraging her modesty under the Section

- Mansi Sharma and India Legal Bureau

THE Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court in a recent judgment addressed a delicate matter while expanding the definition of “outraging the modesty of a woman”. The criminal revision application of Parmeshwar Dhage, the accused, who was convicted by the trial court for “touching the feet of a woman while she was asleep”, was set aside by a single judge bench.

Justice MG Sewlikar in the case of Parmeshwar Dhage vs the State of Maharashtra made a significant observation, stating that “touching any part of the body of a woman without her consent that too in the dead hour of the night by a stranger amounts to a violation of modesty of a woman.” The Indian Penal Code 1860 makes it a punishable offense, as stated under Section 354: “Assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty.— Whoever assaults or uses criminal force to any woman, intending to outrage or knowing it to be likely that he will thereby outrage her modesty, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both.”

According to the facts of the case, around 11 pm on July 4, 2014, a 25-yearold married woman from the Jalna district in Maharashtra felt that someone was touching her feet. She awoke and found that Dhage was sitting near her feet on her bed. She shouted which woke up her grandmother-in-law and they raised an alarm.