[국제]Indian court tells child molester “If you don’t take off your clothes, it’s not sexual violence”

Indian courts are making uprisings by ruling that it is not sexual violence because they did not take off their clothes in a girl molestation case.

On the 27th, according to CNN, on the 19th, Pushpagane Diwala, a judge of the Mumbai High Court in India, acquitted a 39-year-old man who was accused of bringing a 12-year-old girl to her home and trying to remove her underwear.

According to court documents, the suspect entices the child home in December 2016, saying,’I’ll give you a guava,’ and then touched the child’s body. The man was sentenced to three years in prison in a lower court for sexual harassment of a child, but appealed to the higher court.

Judge Diwala admitted that the man was harassing the child after taking the child home, but ruled that “because he did not remove his clothes and did not touch his skin, it does not constitute sexual violence.” If a man’s behavior was recognized as sexual violence, the sentence could be increased to five years in prison.

The judge stated why he was acquitted, saying, “Given the strict standards of criminal punishment, stronger evidence and more serious charges are needed.” “The basic principle of criminal law is that the punishment for a crime is proportional to the severity of the crime.” Instead, the judge admitted only to sexual harassment charges and sentenced him to one year in prison.

Indian intellectuals, mainly women’s circles, were greatly angry after the ruling. They objected to the ruling, saying, “Because the high court made such a precedent, other high courts and lower courts nationwide in the future will have no choice but to follow it.”

Lanzana Kumari, a women’s rights activist, pointed out that the ruling was “embarrassing, absurd, shocking and lacking judicial prudence.” India’s National Women’s Committee then raised concerns that “such precedents will have a series of implications for various legal provisions on women’s safety and security.”

In India, penalties for sexual violence have been strengthened since the 2012 New Delhi female college bus rape and murder incident, but the number of sexual crimes has not decreased. In 2018 alone, there were 33,977 sexual assault cases counted, but it is estimated that more cases were not counted.

YTN PLUS Reporter Jeong Yoon-joo
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[저작권자(c) YTN & YTN plus 무단전재 및 재배포 금지]