A Delhi court has sentenced a man to three years in jail for secretly filming a sexual act between him and a woman without her consent. The court acquitted him of rape charges and termed the act “consensual”.
Additional Sessions Judge Virender Bhat has convicted Rohit under Section 66 E of the Information Technology Act for “clandestinely” filming and taking “obscene” photographs of the woman.
You have exhausted your monthly limit of free stories.
Read more stories for free with an Express account.
Observing the act as a “serious one”, the judge said, “No person has any right to photograph or film private areas of another person without their consent, even if two persons know each other well or are in an intimate relationship.”
The conviction comes in a case where the woman had lodged an FIR alleging that Rohit had taken “obscene photographs” of her and had made an MMS clip. She also alleged that she was raped at his flat. She alleged that he filmed the act with a mobile phone hidden in a cardboard box kept in the room.
The court refused to take a lenient view and observed that such crimes needs to be dealt with sternly as the “market” for “obscene photographs” and “sex videos” is growing these days.
“The woman’s life will be ruined if the videos or obscene photographs are made public via the internet and other means. Therefore, it cannot be said that the crime committed by the accused is not a serious one,” the judge said.
During the trial, Rohit claimed he was falsely implicated in the case and that the woman filmed the video on her mobile phone.
Story continues below this ad
However, the court refused the contention, saying, “He has miserably failed to establish this in the defence. He does not say a word about the same in his testimony and does not have any evidence to prove it.”
The court has also convicted Rohit under sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) IPC , 342 (wrongful confinement) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC. It also slapped a fine of Rs 50,000 on him which will be paid to the woman as compensation.
Kaunain Sheriff M is an award-winning investigative journalist and the National Health Editor at The Indian Express. He is the author of Johnson & Johnson Files: The Indian Secrets of a Global Giant, an investigation into one of the world’s most powerful pharmaceutical companies.
With over a decade of experience, Kaunain brings deep expertise in three areas of investigative journalism: law, health, and data. He currently leads The Indian Express newsroom’s in-depth coverage of health.
His work has earned some of the most prestigious honours in journalism, including the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Award, and the Mumbai Press Club’s Red Ink Award.
Kaunain has also collaborated on major global investigations. He was part of the Implant Files project with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which exposed malpractices in the medical device industry across the world. He also contributed to an international investigation that uncovered how a Chinese big-data firm was monitoring thousands of prominent Indian individuals and institutions in real time.
Over the years, he has reported on several high-profile criminal trials, including the Hashimpura massacre, the 2G spectrum scam, and the coal block allocation case. Within The Indian Express, he has been honoured three times with the Indian Express Excellence Award for his investigations—on the anti-Sikh riots, the Vyapam exam scam, and the abuse of the National Security Act in Uttar Pradesh. ... Read More
