VOYEURISM: AN INFAMOUS CRIME

SHUBHI JADOUN

Author of this article is a Law Student, Lloyd Law College, Noida

“One out of three women has been sexually abused, mentally tortured, been a victim of  violence and most painful among all of it's is that some haven't even opened their eyes once”. We've got reached to intolerance where we cannot even read about the miserable condition of women in our society and we talk about treating women as ‘Goddess’.

Crimes against women has always been a topic of discussion, concluding with solutions but still those provisions or solutions have not yet proved to be beneficial in improving the condition of women in the society. There's not one day when we do not find news associated with crimes against women .

We do have laws prevailing against all such crimes but still we see only increment in the cases of such venal crimes against women. Instead of recouping, situations are turning worse. At this level we  cannot even assure women safety at homes because list of crimes under this category is even longer.

One such not so talked crime against women is voyeurism which refers to the activity of getting pleasure from secretly watching other people in sexual situations or, more generally, from watching other people’s private lives.

VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 21 OF INDIAN CONSTITUTION AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Article 21  of Indian Constitution guarantees to live with human respect, dignity and forestall from any abuse and State is obliged to shield from the infringement of this crucial rights. Not only dignity but even privacy of an individual comes into question because the hidden evil shields himself/herself and invades a person’s personal life like hacking of computer software, using fake Id on social media accounts made with a purpose to sexually, mentally, emotionally harass women and due to unawareness of this crime these cases go vain, to be precise they are not even cases because they are not even reported and the assaulter gets free hand to try this venal paraphilia act on some other women.

As read in article 1 of UDHR, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." This very powerful Universal declaration is being ferociously violated each and every time when the accused thrashes the dignity of a women bysending pornographic material, messages etc.

PENAL LAWS RELATED TO VOYEURISM IN INDIA

SECTION 354-C

Before the horrific incident of Nirbhaya case, the act of voyeurism was not an offence per se in our Indian penal code, 1860. However after the formation of JS verma Committee various amendments were made in our penal laws by Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013 with relation to crime against women. One of the amendments was addition of Section 354-C which describes voyeurism as an offence and is read as follows:-

Any man who watches, or captures the image of a woman engaging in a private act in circumstances where she would usually have the expectation of not being observed either by the perpetrator or by any other person at the behest of the perpetrator or disseminates such image shall be punished on first conviction with imprisonment of either description for a term which shall not be less than one year, but which may extend to three years, and shall also be liable to fine, and be punished on a second or subsequent conviction, with imprisonment of either description for a term which shall not be less than three years, but which may extend to seven years, and shall also be liable to fine.

SECTION 509

In addition to this newly made provision, we already had a provision which if interpreted to this extend can be applicable on the assaulter of voyeurism, which is section 509 and is read as “Word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman —Whoever, intending to insult the modesty of any woman or intrudes upon the privacy of such woman, shall be punished with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine, or with both.”  Any act of thrashing a women’s dignity and invading her privacy is definitely outraging her modesty as no doubt that modesty differs from women to women but the fact that modesty definitely includes a women’s dignity cannot be eliminated and thus this provision can be used to held the person guilty.

DEFAMATION AND IT ACT.

If we talk about how IT act deals with the crime the we will come to know that cyber stalking is a crime and section 66E of the amended IT act, 2008 makes it a crime whereas it states that any act that paves way to infringement of security and also  expresses that any demonstration by an individual who, purposely or unconsciously, without assent, snaps a picture of the private territories of an individual, or sends such a photo to another person or distributes such a photo, under conditions which abuse the individual's protection, will be viewed as a wrongdoing.

Also in addition to this section there is, Section 67A of the IT Act that expresses that if material which is distributed online is explicitly unequivocal, the individual can be detained and in such cases even Section 72 of the same act can be invoked as it talks about breaching privacy and confidentiality.

What's more, as it is extremely certain that distributing such pictures will damage a person's rights and keep a person's notoriety in question and move his picture downwards in eye of the general public it is definitely a case of Defamation too.

CONCLUSION

 A law made today would take a number of years to show how well is it doing and same goes with the laws related to Voyeurism as we still tend to see cyber-crimes on its peak and negligée cases being reported due to lack of awareness, threat, name and shame of society.  It is one of those crime which a large number of people in our country are not aware of as it is not a debatable topic in mainstream but what needs to be considered is that it is one of those small crimes (which people would call) which leads to more heinous crime like RAPE!, as stalking is the first step towards rape and not only stalking but explicit pictures and pornography as well promote paraphilia acts and so called urges of the assaulters and thus to stop these crimes its high time we take action against the basics.