Can women also be sexual abusers? Judges get prompted to raise the question in a Mumbai case

Submitted by asandil on 5/13/2014

Are culprits of sexual abuse or violence necessarily men? Or do women execute sexual abuse as well? An ongoing case in the Bombay High Court has set judges and legal experts pondering over these worrisome questions. In a case, which came up for hearing on May 5, 2014, a 78-year-old lady from a suburban Mumbai housing society has been blamed for attacking her neighbour, a 55-year-old woman with lust in her intentions.

The occurrence allegedly took place in 2010, amidst a conflict between the two families and different neighbours over matters related to the housing society. The so-called molestation is one of those allegations which have been filed by both the parties against each other.

Pradeep Havnur, the elderly lady’s lawyer, gave all the allegations a dismissal claiming as fabricated and pointed out that Indian law does not permit a case of molestation to be filed in the court of law against a woman. The concerned judges, however, took serious notice of this unique aspect of the case and asked the lawyers to go deeper into what laws in other countries state about women as perpetrators of sexual assault.

In the Indian Penal Code, assault (Section 375) is obviously characterized as a demonstration conferred by a man on a lady, in the same way that rape and provocation (Section 354) is depicted as a demonstration of “offending the humility” of lady, by a man. Indeed the new Sexual Harassment of Women at the Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, is intended to secure ladies from ill-use by the hands of male partners.

In any case if a lady is part of a group that attacks or assaults someone else, “they are engaged as abettors of the wrongdoing”, said Flavia Agnes, a Mumbai-based ladies’ rights legal counsellor. In a few nations, despite the fact that laws might expect that sexual abusers are dependably men, they have seen instances of ladies being charged and indicted assault.

When India’s new rape laws, under the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act were being discussed in 2013, some activists had lobbied for gender neutral laws. “But it did not work out that way, and we now have laws that indicate the opposite – that women simply cannot be sexual abusers,” said Aishwarya Bhati, an advocate-on-record at the Supreme Court.

“Laws are meant to protect women from the routine, widespread and systematic violence they face at the hands of men,” said human rights activist and lawyer Vrinda Grover. In such a situation, if laws provide for women to be booked for sexual abuse, they could easily be misused against women, she said.

Ref. https://scroll.in/article/663759/Can-women-be-sexual-abusers-too?-Mumbai-case-prompts-judges-to-ask-the-question

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