Justice, it is said, is blind. Not, it would seem, for S Krishna Kumar, a sessions judge in Kerala, for whom the dress worn by the complainant provided sufficient legal ground to make comments offensive and disrespectful to women in a sexual harassment case. He made these observations while granting bail to social activist and Malayalam writer Civic Chandran in two separate cases, revealing, in the process, a crude misogyny that is shocking in the institution of the judiciary, in a state that takes great pride in giving women their rightful place across sectors, at home and in the workplace.
The airing of a strikingly regressive mindset seemed to come together with an undue haste that ignored the Supreme Court’s direction reiterated in several judgements – cautioning lower court judges against making unwarranted observations on the merits of a case while hearing bail pleas. In the first bail order on August 2, Judge Kumar said that provisions of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 would not prima facie stand against the accused because it is “highly unbelievable that he will touch the body of the victim fully knowing that she is a member of Scheduled Caste”. In the second bail order on August 12, he described the photographs of the complainant presented by the defence counsel as “sexually provocative” and went on to observe that “Section 354 will not prima facie stand against the accused”. He also drew a comparison between the physical attributes of the complainant and the accused to make the bizarre claim that the assault alleged by the former could not have taken place in the first case.
