Supreme Court says abusive words alone do not amount to obscenity
The Supreme Court has said that mere swear words, profanities and vulgar expletives, however offensive or uncivil, do not amount to obscenity under law. The
The Supreme Court has said that mere swear words, profanities and vulgar expletives, however offensive or uncivil, do not amount to obscenity under law. The court made the observation while hearing a man's appeal against a high court order that had upheld his conviction under Section 294 of the Indian Penal Code. A bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Vipul M Pancholi said abusive or vulgar language by itself does not constitute the offence of obscenity under the section. In a judgment delivered on Friday, the court said: "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." Read Full Story The bench added, "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." It said such words, however abusive, unpalatable or uncivil, do not satisfy the requirement of Section 294(b) of the IPC.
The court also noted that causing annoyance to others in a public place is a mandatory ingredient of the offence under Section 294(b). "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 arose from an agricultural land dispute in Tamil Nadu in August 2017, during which 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 said that when the complainant intervened, the petitioner verbally abused him with vulgar expletives and caste-based slurs. The trial court had convicted the petitioner under Sections 294(b), 326 and 506(ii) of the IPC, along with provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The
Madras High Court later acquitted him of the charges under the SC/ST Act but upheld his convictions under the IPC. The Supreme Court has now said that abusive or vulgar words alone do not make out an offence of obscenity under Section 294(b) of the IPC. Ends With PTI inputs.
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