A Mumbai court recently convicted a 33-year-old man for making vulgar gestures at a 66-year-old woman in an incident of road rage [Gavdevi Police Station v. Aniket Patil].
Girgaum Metropolitan Magistrate NA Patel observed in his 18-page-order that crimes related to the modesty of woman was an attack on their fundamental right to live with dignity and leniency in such cases will send a wrong message to the society, reports Bar and Bench.
“If in such type of offence only because accused is young he is released on good behaviour bonds or on fine only. Then certainly it will adversely affect the society.” the order states.
The Magistrate reasoned that any type of unwarranted leniency towards the accused will send a wrong signal to the society, and hence did not release the accused on good behaviour bond.
The complainant in the case was going with her son in their car when at a signal a red car belonging to the accused came from the left side and pushed them towards the divider.
This continued for another 100m distance, after which the complainant and her son notice that the car was trying to overtake them.
Following that, the red car stopped at the signal, the accused pulled down the window and showed them a middle finger.
While the woman tried to pacify her son to keep peace, the accused abused her and tried to drive away, but the son blocked his car and from there the accused was taken to the police station.
The accused was booked under Sections 354A (sexual harassment), 354D (stalking) and 509 (gestures towards outraging modesty of woman) of the Indian Penal Code.
He raised a contention that the complainant had already filed a case of sexual harassment against another accused before, which indicated that she was in the habit of filing FIRS to extract money.
Another contention he raised was that her son was a lawyer and he used his influence to get his complaint registered.
Refuting the contentions, the Court observed that merely because son of the informant is a lawyer does not mean that police can take false FIR at his instance.
“The advocate can be the victim of the crime and where advocate or his relative are victim of the crime. Certainly they will take action against the wrong doer, so it does not mean that it is the false FIR,” the order said.
The court also opined that it was not “acceptable to prudent man that an young lawyer will use his mother to file false FIR of sexual harassment on road rage”.
On the contention of false FIRs, the Court stated that the woman was travelling with her son and would not make such type of false allegations of gestures in front of her son on petty issues.
The Court further noted that the complainant and the victim were unknown to each other before the incident so there was no reason for the complainant to make false allegations.
“Merely because she was the victim of such type of crime more than once, does not mean that she is in a habit of filing such type of complaints to extract the money,” the Court stated.
The Court concluded that accused is very young but from the allegation and circumstances it appears that vulgar gestures were made towards a woman of 66 years old and the incident was due to road rage.
“Though the accused is quite young but he is grown up person and certainly know what was doing,” the Court stated while sentencing the accused to imprisonment for six months.
