Claims truth as her defence, as court dispenses with her personal appearance.
How effective is the functioning of the Internal Complaints Committee?
Big wins, but patriarchy is still alive
Women want change and now is the time.
In the present case, the Bombay High Court has correctly settled the proposition that an extramarital consensual gay relationship is not a criminal offence; just like how it is no more a criminal offence in case of a heterosexual spouses. However, such a relationship comes under the purview of “adultery” as a ground for divorce (civil wrong). The Bombay HC judgment signifies the social acceptance of homosexuality as human nature, and it is a step closer to recognising gender equality and different sexual orientations.
So far, the rule of thumb that prudent men followed was that if you are harassing someone, you will know that you are; it isn’t something you do unknowingly. But cooption of the tools of the #MeToo movement i.e. public shaming with a call to ostracise, by some women to deal with incidents that were basically bad judgment calls by them in their younger days is leading to two very serious problems. One, it is giving plausible deniability to men who have rightfully been accused of harassment. And more disturbingly, it is reducing career opportunities for women in industries that are controlled by men.
It is essential to criminalise marital rape in order to break the age-old understanding that “marriage sanctions sex” or that married women are incapable of giving consent or that consent is presumed/implied upon marriage. This understanding only legitimises the patriarchal notion that a woman is the property of her husband after marriage.
The Writ Petition challenged Section 354A of IPC — Sexual Harassment and Punishment for Sexual Harassment — to the extent that it had been interpreted to deny protection to a complainant who does not conform to the stereotypical and binary notion of “woman”, based on sex assigned at birth, resulting in violation of fundamental rights under Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution of India, and being contrary to the decision in National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India.
The fundamental right to self-identified gender under Articles 14, 15, 19 and 21 of the Constitution stands violated blatantly. With only four MPs addressing the debate, the Bill passed by the Lok Sabha is a washout. The Rajya Sabha must now resist, especially since it has already passed ‘The Rights of Transgender Persons Bill, 2014’ in April 2015.
The right to fair trial by the procedure established by law is the right guaranteed under Article 14 of the Constitution. The arbitrary actions of the State in detaining under preventive laws, torturing of the detenu in custody and imposing impossible conditions for executing bail are few examples of violation of rights guaranteed under the Constitution.
#MeToo is a scream for help as well as a call to action — by women from all walks of life, united in their demand to end rape culture in general and sexual harassment at workplace in particular. The #MeToo tracker is a collation of all the names that have been accused of sexual harassment so far in India in the wake of the 2018 movement.
The Union Government has not yet implemented the directions issued by the Supreme Court of India that required the Central Government to give wide-scale publicity to the Supreme Court judgment in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India.
April 16,2019
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