All that’s vulgar is not obscene, says HC

Aurangabad advocate spared of jail term as court found him not guilty of ‘obscenity’
 
There is a fine line separating ‘vulgar’ from ‘obscene’. And that saved  advocate Sopan Shinde, 50, from a  six-month jail term.

Last week, Bombay High Court quashed Shinde’s conviction and jail term for writing “obscene” letters about his estranged wife to her superior at work place. “Vulgar writing is not necessarily obscene,” HC noted in its order.

Shinde, an Aurangabad-resident, married a nurse (name withheld) of a local government hospital in the late Eighties. The marriage did not last long and the two started living separately from 2000.

Shinde wanted divorce, but his wife refused to oblige. Frustrated, he wrote several “obscene” letters to the chief matron of the hospital his wife worked in, labelling the latter as a prostitute and accusing her of infidelity. The chief matron showed the letters to his wife, who promptly lodged a police complaint, alleging obscenity and defamation under the Indian Penal Code. 

In the trial, it was proved that the letters, which described sexual escapades in slang language, were written by Shinde. Convicted for obscenity and defamation, he was fined Rs3,000 and sentenced to six months in prison.

Shinde challenged his conviction in HC. Justice VR Kingaonkar quashed the lower court order Wednesday last week, stating, “Obscenity does not lie in letters of the words. The writing, for the purpose of branding it as obscene must have tendency to deprave and corrupt persons, who are likely to read the same.”

The HC ruled that though the contents were vulgar, the letters could not be termed obscene as they “do not tend to deprave any gullible reader, and the intention is not to cause sexual arousement (sic) of the reader.”

The judge noted that the letters were written to the chief matron. “As a matter of fact, nudity is the order of the day in the context of her profession as auxiliary midwife. The chief matron was in no way likely to be depraved on reading of such writing of the letters,” he said.

The court also quashed Shinde’s conviction under defamation. It noted that for an offence of defamation, “there must be publication of imputation intending to harm reputation of the person who would feel defamated (sic).”

The judge stated that Shinde had not asked the matron to show the letters to other people. The matron could simply have thrown the letters into the dustbin, because “they were worth such treatment”.

Before ordering that Shinde be set free from jail, the judge observed that such vulgar behaviour was not becoming of a lawyer and added that Bar Council could take appropriate steps against him.