Obscenity In Law Is Not The Same As Vulgarity, Supreme Court Clarifies
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has held that the use of abusive language or vulgar expletives does not by itself amount to the offence of obscenity under criminal law unless the words are lascivious, appeal to prurient interests and have the tendency to "deprave or corrupt" those exposed to them, reported Live Law.
A bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Vipul M. Pancholi made the observation while partly allowing the appeal of a 70-year-old man from Tamil Nadu who was convicted in a case arising out of a land dispute in August 2017.
The Supreme Court set aside the convictions under Sections 294(b), which relates to uttering obscene words in or near a public place and 506(ii), which deals with criminal intimidation under the Indian Penal Code (IPC). On the obscenity charge, it held that the alleged abusive expressions, even if accepted as true, were merely vulgar or offensive and did not satisfy the legal test for obscenity.
The court clarified that obscenity in law is distinct from vulgarity, abuse or profanity. It said that while swear words and profanities may be offensive or uncivil, they cannot be treated as obscene unless they satisfy the legal requirements under Section 294(b) of IPC. The man had used phrases such as "motherf***ker", "son of a wh**e" and other expletives during a fight. "Such words, howsoever abusive, unpalatable or uncivil, do not satisfy the requirement of Section 294(b) IPC," the court said, as per a report in Hindustan Times.
Live Law reported that the court referred to the constitution bench judgment in Ranjit D. Udeshi v. State of Maharashtra (1965), which held that obscenity is material that tends to "deprave and corrupt" susceptible minds. It also relied on Chandrakant Kalyandas Kakodkar v. State of Maharashtra (1969), which recognised that standards of obscenity depend on the morality of contemporary society, and Aveek Sarkar v. State of West Bengal (2014), where the court adopted the "community standards" test in place of the earlier Hicklin test.
The bench observed that for an offence under 294(b) of the IPC, the prosecution must prove that the utterance caused annoyance to others in or near a public place, a mandatory ingredient of the offence.
The trial court had convicted the appellant under Sections 294(b), 326 and 506(ii) of the IPC as well as provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The Madras High Court later acquitted him of the offences under the SC/ST Act but upheld the IPC convictions.
On the charge of criminal intimidation under Section 506(ii) IPC, the court ruled that mere threatening words uttered during an altercation are insufficient unless there is evidence that they were intended to cause alarm or compel the complainant to act or refrain from acting in a particular manner.
However, the bench upheld the conviction under Section 326 IPC for voluntarily causing grievous hurt with a dangerous weapon. It noted that the medical evidence corroborated the complainant's testimony that he had suffered a fractured nasal bone after being assaulted with a billhook, the Hindustan Times reports.
Taking into account the appellant's age, health condition and the fact that the incident arose from a land dispute, the Supreme Court modified the sentence to imprisonment till the rising of the court. It also directed the appellant to pay a fine of Rs 50,000 within two months.
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