Considering the circumstances that drive a woman to the red light areas, the bench of Justice Markandey Katju and Justice Gyan Sudha Misra said she is compelled to indulge in “prostitution” not for pleasure but because of abject poverty.
The Supreme Court has ruled that prostitutes too have a right to live with dignity under article 21 of the constitution “since they are also human beings”.
Considering the circumstances that drive a woman to the red light areas, the bench of Justice Markandey Katju and Justice Gyan Sudha Misra said she is compelled to indulge in “prostitution” not for pleasure but because of abject poverty.
“If such a woman is granted opportunity to avail technical or vocational training, she would be able to earn her livelihood instead of selling her body,” the top court observed, while upholding the conviction of one Budhadev Karmaskar who had mercilessly killed a sex worker Chayay Rani Pal alias Buri on November 19,1999.
Buri lived in Kolkata. Karmaskar had been sentenced by a trial court and Calcutta high court.
The bench has asked the Central and state governments to prepare schemes for giving technical or vocational training to sex workers and sexually-abused women all over the country.
Judges also recalled novels and stories written by Bengali writer Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyaya where prostitutes have been shown to be women of very high character. Rajyalakshmi in Shrikant and Chandramukhi in Devdas are some of those characters.
The plight of “prostitutes” has been depicted by Urdu poet Sahil Ludhianvi in his poem Chakle sung in the Hindi film Pyasa “Jineh Naaz Hai Hind Per wo kahan hain”.
Sonya Marmelodov in Dostoyevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment is depicted as a girl who sacrifices her body to earn some bread for her impoverished family, the judges observed.
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