The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court has acquitted a 25-year-old man who was earlier convicted under the POCSO Act and Section 354-A of the IPC for allegedly saying “I love you” to a minor girl and briefly holding her hand.
In October 2015, a 17-year-old girl from Khapa in Katol taluka lodged a police complaint against Ravindra Narete. She alleged that while returning home from school, Narete stopped her near a field, held her hand, asked for her name, and said “I love you.” After the incident, the girl informed her father, who then approached the police and filed an FIR.
Based on the complaint, the youth was booked under Section 8 of the POCSO Act and charged with sexual harassment.
In 2017, a trial court found him guilty and sentenced him to three years in prison. However, Justice Urmila Joshi-Phalke of the Nagpur bench later reviewed the evidence and ruled that the conviction could not be upheld.
The judge observed that merely saying “I love you” does not, by itself, indicate ‘sexual intent’ as defined under the POCSO Act. Justice Urmila Joshi-Phalke emphasized that a single expression of affection—without any vulgar gestures, repeated stalking, or physical advances—does not meet the legal criteria for sexual harassment or assault as outlined in the law.
The court remarked, “There is not a single cir-cumstance indicating that the accused’s real intention was to establish sexual contact with the victim.” The High Court further stated that there must be additional factors pointing towards a sexual motive, adding that merely saying ‘I love you’ isn’t enough to imply a sexual angle.
Any sexual act involves actions like inappropriate touching, forcible disrobing, or making indecent gestures or remarks with the intention to insult a woman’s modesty. In this case, there is no evidence to suggest that the accused said ‘I love you’ with any sexual intent, the High Court observed. “If somebody says that he is in love with another person or expresses his feelings that in it-self would not amount to an intent showing some sort of sexual intention,” the order said.
The High Court ruled that the case does not come under the purview of molestation or sexual harassment.
Highlighting the misuse of legal provisions and the absence of evidence indicating any continuous harassment, the Court set aside the conviction and ordered the appellant’s immediate release, calling the conviction “erroneous.”
👉 Click here to read the latest Gujarat news on TheLiveAhmedabad.com