The Delhi High Court has asked the Delhi State Legal Services Authority (DSLSA) to formulate a programme to educate students and teenagers that posting intimate content on social media/internet without the consent of the other person is a violation of law. A single-judge bench of Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma made this observation in its May 11 order while denying regular bail to a 19-year old man accused of raping a minor girl and later threatening her that he would post her pictures and videos on social media if she did not keep quiet. The HC observed that there were cases where the victims had alleged that inappropriate videos or photos of relationships were made by one of the parties and under threat of posting them on social media, “the minor girls are sexually abused, who do not understand or know as to how to deal with such situations”. “Therefore, in cases of sexual assault, without consent or under some inducement, inappropriate videos and photographs are captured which are used for a long time for blackmailing the victims and continuing the sexual abuse. this Court has witnessed cases where young boys have been sexually abused, assaulted and have been victims of such blackmailing,” said Justice Sharma. Justice Sharma thereafter asked the DSLSA to "formulate a programme whereby they may educate students, potential vulnerable victims as well as teenagers who may indulge in such crimes without knowing that posting such intimate content on social media without consent of the person concerned is in violation of law". The court noted that in the present case, the accused met and became friends with the minor girl three years ago. In January-February 2021, the accused allegedly called the girl to his house and established physical relations with her. He said he had made a video of the incident and would post it on social media if she did not keep quiet. It was further alleged that one year ago, the accused had again made physical relations with her and was forcing her to marry him by changing her religion. It was stated that on the day the girl lodged a police complaint in January this year, the accused had thrown eggs and stones at her house. The FIR was registered under various sections of the IPC including rape and aggravated penetrative sexual assault under the POCSO Act. The accused argued that the present case was one of “adolescent love” as the accused is about 19 years of age and the girl was 17 years. Reliance was placed on a May 8 order of Justice Sharma wherein it was observed that adolescent love cannot be "controlled by the Courts". Justice Sharma rejected this argument and said that in the previous case, the girl had consistently supported the accused and had herself said she wanted to marry him and, therefore, the present case was distinguishable from the case decided in the May 8 order. "To sum up, had it been a case of consensual adolescent mutual love as argued by the learned counsel for the applicant, it would have no place of abusing, blackmailing, inducement, threat, violence, pressuring and threatening her to convert to his religion for the purpose of forcibly getting married to her even when she wanted to get out of the abusive relationship. She was put under fear and threat of social shaming of herself and her family, which does not indicate that it was a consensual innocent adolescent mutual love relationship," Justice Sharma said. Justice Sharma noted that the "gravity of offence" is aggravated as the accused threatened to make public the intimate videos and images that he had captured without consent of the girl and was using it to blackmail her, and in return was asking for sexual favours. “In view of the foregoing discussion, and considering the fact that the accused is continuously threatening and blackmailing the prosecutrix and charges are yet to be framed and the prosecutrix is yet to be examined, this Court is not inclined to grant any relief to the applicant at this stage,” it ordered.
