The Petitioners approached the court challenging the order of the Madhya Pradesh High Court which allowed bail on the condition that the accused would tie rakhi. The petitioners approached the Apex Court seeking direction on this particular issue which trivializes or tends to trivialize the heinous crime of sexual offenses against women and children.
The accused in that case was charged with outraging the modesty of the women and the Madhya Pradesh High Court granted bail to him on the condition that he tied rakhi on the wrist of the complainant.
In the petition, the petitioner contended that no observation or conclusion should be made by the court which normalizes an otherwise grave and heinous crime. If done, it trivializes the issue. The petition mentioned a range of other instances wherein the court had imposed ‘non-serious’ or strange conditions while granting bail.
In Ravi Jatav v. the State of MP, the person charged under various sections of IPC including 376-D, 366, 506, etc. was granted bail on the condition that he would register himself with the district magistrate as “Covid Warrior”. This, contends the petitioner, trivializes the seriousness of the offense.
In view of the same, the petitioner has sought direction from the SC for the high courts and all the courts to ensure that no observation or conditions are imposed in issues concerning serious offenses against women and children. The conditions or observations should not be extraneous to the facts and circumstances of the case. Furthermore, the observation should not be of nature which affects the dignity of women or there is any sort of bias, affects free and fair trial, allows the accused to meet the victim or their family, normalizes heinous offenses or trivializes the same, takes note of the fact that the victim has attained majority (in POCSO cases) and that the accused has offered to marry her, allows bail in favor of accused, grants bail on the ground that the victim is of "loose character" or is "habituated to sexual intercourse".
The petition furthermore stressed the dire need for continuing judicial training of the judges and sensitization programs and workshops by the National Judicial Academy.
The SC in this case issued notice to the Attorney General KK Venugopal.
The Attorney General in the present case iterated upon 2-3 years of gender sensitization training undertaken by the lawyers and he also stressed the need for sensitization of Judges by the State Judicial Academies. The AG remarked that the judges must step into the shoes of the survivor and must pass the order keeping in mind that the survivor is a part of his family.
The judgment was reserved.
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