In the following period as time passes our society evolves with both negative and positive aspects. Positive aspects are those by which our society evolves in a good way and we make developments beyond our past imaginations and on the other hand in the field negative aspects the society gives birth to various crimes and the crime against women is on the rise and rapidly increasing day by day.
INTRODUCTION
Offences related to women are increasing day by day and the main reason for that matter is the male dominant society we have in India; we live in the 21st century but still the attacks on the woman remain untouched in our society.
Because of this situation, the legislature has developed the provisions which are helping the women of our society by getting the justice from the criminal assault they face, legislature draft the law to protect women with the implementation of section 349 to 374 of INDIAN PENAL CODE 1860, in this paper, we are here to discuss the section 354 of IPC to better understand the concept of outraging the modesty of women.
MEANING OF OUTRAGING THE MODESTY
Supreme court has defined the modesty of women as “the essence of a women modesty is her sex”. In the situation where criminal force is used against a woman and assault also conducted on her, removing her saree coupled with the request of sexual intercourse would call to be an outraging the modesty of a woman.
In other words, for invoking the offence under section 354 of IPC 1860 will apply to the act of the accused where he falls short of penetrating and that does not fall short then it would call for the offence of rape no matter whether ejaculation is there or not.
LAWS IN INDIA
1) Section 349 of IPC.
2) Section 350 of IPC.
3) Section 351 of IPC.
4) Section 354 of IPC.
Section 349- Force
A person is said to use force to another if he causes motion, change of motion or cessation of motion to other person and he does such act to come in contact with some substance.
1) With help of his body power.
2) By disposing of the substance in such a manner that such motion or movement affect other individuals.
3) By inducing any animal to move to change its motion or to cease to move.
Section 350- Criminal force
Whoever intentionally used criminal force to any person without the permission/consent of that person and in this it is intended likely to know that such criminal force would harm the person and causes injury to that person.
Section 351- Assault
Whoever makes any gesture, or any preparation intending or knowing it to be likely that gesture or preparation will cause any person present to apprehend that he who makes that gesture or preparation is about to use criminal force to that person, is said to commit an assault.
MAIN PROVISION FOR ARTICLE: Section 354- outraging the modesty of women
Whoever assaults or uses criminal force to any woman with the intention to outrage or knowing to be likely that he will outrage her modesty. He shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which shall not be less than one year but which may extend to five years, and shall also be liable to fine.
This offence of section 354 of IPC is a cognizable offence in which a police officer has the authority to arrest the accused individual and also it is a heinous crime which non-bailable offence under which bail cannot be granted to the accused of the offence.
Therefore, to establish the case of section 354, by only proving assault and criminal force against women is not enough, we had to prove that the accused has the intention to outrage the modesty of women.
*Important- To take the defence in the false accusation of section 354 IPC, it is important to prove that the woman was the consenting party during the intercourse.
In the year 2014 Delhi High Court dealt with a case where a woman files a complaint to the police station about that his brother-in-law shows middle finger, obscene gestures and lewd marks and also he slapped the woman in this situation the court called the accused of liability under section 354 of IPC for outraging her modesty and now he is looking at the imprisonment of 3 years with fine.
ESSENTIALS OF SECTION 354
1) Use of assault and criminal force against the woman.
2) There should be the intention to outrage the modesty of the woman.
IMPORTANT CASES
DIVENDER SINGH V HARI RAM [1]
The court said that just by pushing a girl and beat her up made the offence of assault but on this basis, it cannot be said that the intention is to outrage her modesty, it is very difficult and vital to prove such intention beyond the circumstances.
STATE VS MUSA [2]
In this case, a married woman was victimized by two men, in this those 2 men dragged her in her room and then commit rape one after the other. a semen sample was found on victims’ clothes which is to be used as medical evidence but there were no semen traces on the clothes of the accused men. hence, charges of rape cannot be constituted so they were held liable for the offence under section 354 of IPC which is using assault or criminal force intentionally to outrage modesty of a woman.
CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have discussed all the possible aspects of section 354 of INDIAN PENAL CODE 1860 and it clearly explains how the offence take place and how the judiciary is going to interpret the case with the given circumstances but he judiciary had done a great job in delivering judgement where the privacy of women matters the most and it is clearly shown in the 2014 judgement of Delhi High Court where the accused has been treated with the perfect punishment for his ungrateful and ill-treated act.
REFERENCES
[1] 1990 Cr LJ 19(Pat).
[2] 1991 Cr LJ 2168 Orissa.
This blog is written by Shivam, Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies.
Some more of Shivam BLOGs,
- ACID ATTACK: A NEW FACET OF GENDER-BASED CRIME
- SECTION 498A OF INDIAN PENAL CODE 1860
- DEATH BY NEGLIGENCE
- TRIAL AND TYPES OF TRIAL
- CRIMINAL MISAPPROPRIATION OF PROPERTY
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