The Supreme Court on Friday got down to some straight talk with men asking them to respect a woman’s individual choice when it came to matters involving love.
Wondering why women in the country are not allowed to live in peace, the court sent a strong signal to eve-teasers by sending a man to jail for seven years on the charge of harassing a woman to the point that she decided to end her life. This action of the accused was seen as sufficient evidence by the court to hold him guilty of abetting the girl’s suicide under Section 306 of the Indian Penal Code.
The accused, Pawan Kumar, was in love with the victim, a teenager who hailed from a poor family in Himachal Pradesh. Both eloped but the boy was caught by the police as the girl’s father lodged a complaint of kidnapping and rape. Although the court finally acquitted him of these serious charges, the boy nursed a deep revenge against the girl.
The girl wished to move ahead trying to forget the past but the accused constantly harassed her and threatened to ruin her life. Unable to bear the harassment any further, on July 19, 2008, the victim poured kerosene and set herself ablaze. Her dying declaration revealed the acts of the accused, which led the police to lodge a case of abetment to suicide against the boy. He was lucky to get acquitted by the trial judge in 2010 but the Himachal Pradesh High Court reversed the acquittal sending him to jail for seven years.
Feeling deeply for the girl, who fell victim to the “deplorable depravity” of an eve-teaser, the Bench of Justices Dipak Misra, AM Khanwilkar and Mohan M Shantanagouder wondered why the society had yet not accepted a woman’s individual choice and developed a sense of equal respect to their likes and dislikes. The Bench said, “One is compelled to think and constrained to deliberate why the women in this country cannot be allowed to live in peace and lead a life that is empowered with dignity and freedom.”
In a civilised society like ours, the Bench noted that eve-teasing had become rampant in educational institutions, public places, parks, railway stations, etc. “This only goes to show that requisite sense of respect for women has not been socially cultivated.” Making it loud and clear that instances of eve-teasing will be harshly dealt by courts, the Bench termed such an act as “obnoxious” and something that creates an “incurable dent” on women’s rights of not to be discriminated against under Article 15.
“No one can compel a woman to love. She has an absolute right to reject. In a civilised society male chauvinism has no room…A man should not put his ego, or for that matter, masculinity on a pedestal and abandon the concept of civility,” said Justice Misra, writing the judgement by which the accused was sent back to jail.