Holding a minor child’s hands and the act of a man unzipping his pants in front of her will not come under the ambit of ‘sexual assault’.
The order was given by Justice Pushpa Ganediwala, the same judge who had given the controversial “skin-to-skin contact” verdict.
The HC resorted to the same legal logic which examines a loophole in Section 7 of the POCSO Act regarding ‘physical contact’.
“Sexual assault – Whoever, with sexual intent touches the vagina, penis, anus or breast of the child or makes the child touch the vagina, penis, anus or breast of such person or any other person, or does any other act with sexual intent which involves physical contact without penetration is said to commit sexual assault.”
In the absence of physical contact of private parts “with sexual intent without penetration” in this case, the judge said that the offence falls under the grouping: “any other act with sexual intent which involves physical contact without penetration”.
The court was quoted as having said:
“The words ‘any other act’ encompasses within itself, the nature of the acts which are similar to the acts which have been specifically mentioned in the definition on the premise of the principle of ‘ejusdem generis.’ The act should be of the same nature or closure to that. The acts of ‘holding the hands of the prosecutrix’, or ‘opened zip of the pant’ as has been allegedly witnessed by PW-1, in the opinion of this Court, does not fit in the definition of ‘sexual assault”.
Do you get it?
Because I don't. The interpretation of the law makes no sense. The judgement makes no sense.
So here's something that does make sense to me. It's from the 1880 pamphlet "An Appeal to the Young" by Peter Kropotkin:
If you reason instead of repeating what is taught to you; if you analyze the law and strip off those cloudy fictions with which it has been draped in order to conceal its real origin, which is the right of the stronger, and its substance, which has ever been the consecration of all the tyrannies handed down to mankind through its long and bloody history; when you have comprehended this, your contempt for the law will be profound indeed. You will understand that to remain the servant of the written law is to place yourself every day in opposition to the law of conscience, and to make a bargain on the wrong side; and, since this struggle cannot go on forever, you will either silence your conscience and become a scoundrel, or you will break with tradition, and you will work with us for the utter destruction of all this injustice, economic, social and political. But then you will be a Socialist, you will be a
Revolutionist.