Use of swear words, profanities, vulgar expletives will not amount to obscenity: SC

The Supreme Court has said that mere swear words, profanities and vulgar expletives, however offensive or uncivil, will not amount to obscenity.

A bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Vipul M Pancholi — while hearing a man’s plea challenging a high court order that confirmed the trial court’s conviction of him under Section 294 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) — observed that abusive or vulgar language by itself does not constitute the offence of obscenity under the Section.

“For an utterance to be considered obscene, it must be shown that it was lascivious, appealed to prurient interests and had the tendency to deprave and corrupt the minds of those who are exposed to it.

“Tested on this anvil, even if all the allegations levelled in the complaint are taken at their face value and accepted to be true in entirety, the same cannot be held to be obscene,” the top court said in a judgment on Friday.

It said that such words, however abusive, unpalatable or uncivil, do not satisfy the requirement of Section 294(b) of IPC.

“It is nobody’s case that use of such words caused annoyance to others in a public place, which is a mandatory ingredient of the Section, much less to the complainant. In the absence thereof, we find that the offence under Section 294(b) IPC is not made out,” the bench said.

The case related to an agricultural land dispute in Tamil Nadu in August 2017, wherein an argument took place between the petitioner and his brother-in-law.

Two days later, the petitioner allegedly got into another confrontation with the complainant’s nephew over the same property issue.

The prosecution claimed that when the complainant stepped in, the petitioner verbally abused him with vulgar expletives and caste-based slurs.

The trial court found the petitioner guilty under Sections 294(b) (obscenity), 326 (grievous hurt) and 506(ii) (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code, along with provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

The Madras High Court acquitted the petitioner of the charges under the SC/ST Act but confirmed his convictions under the IPC.