Aastha Thakur
Published on: 07 November 2022 at 22:00 IST
Recently, Karnataka High Court denied to grant the plea to quash criminal proceedings under Section 482 of CrPC against an accused who claimed that being a customer of prostitution services, he should be absolved under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act.
Justice M Nagaprasanna held,
“If the contention of the petitioner is accepted that he is a customer and he should be let off, it would be putting a premium on the activities of the petitioner who has indulged in such acts which prima facie meet the ingredients of all the offences alleged against him. Technicality or hyper-technicality cannot mask the allegation of the kind alleged in the case at hand.”
The Court also made a distinction between this case and others in which a customer is found to have involved in such activities during a search at a spa, brothel, or lodge. It was claimed that the minor victim registered the complaint herself.
The judge elaborately said, “It is not a case where the alleged victim was above 18 years and it is not a case that the Police have conducted a search and unearthed any incident in a particular place which has been used to run a rocket of prostitution,”
Moreover, it was highlighted that the provision under Information Technology were invoked, as the girl was under apprehension that her videos would be uploaded on multiple websites.
The Court noted,
“The petitioner is said to have indulged in sexual intercourse with a minor and not stopping at that indulged in videographing the incidents through his phone and is now threatening to make it viral on social media or on any other website.”
The matter was initiated over the complaint filed by victim, a college student, who was allegedly pushed into prostitution. She managed to escape the people who were restraining her, and she filed the report.
The petitioner was accused with aggravated penetrative sexual assault on a minor, rape, criminal intimidation, aiding and abetting, and kidnapping.
It was asserted that the complainant had named numerous individuals, and numerous First Information Reports (FIR) had been filed against them, constituting an abuse of the process of law.
The court rejected this claim as well because it was determined that making physical contact with every man was a separate incident.
“Merely because the victim is the same, it cannot be said that only one crime should have been registered and all of them should be put in one basket as accused in the said crime.”
By giving this reasoning, the Court set aside the plea to quash criminal proceedings filed under Section 482 of the CrPC.