New Delhi: Dealing with a case involving a solitary Instagram direct message (DM) sent by a state-level cricketer to his classmate, the Karnataka High Court has cautioned against the use of criminal law as a “bludgeon” to punish youthful vocabulary.
“U kinda look so hot in light coloured clothes,” the then 19-year-old wrote in a private direct message to his 20-year-old classmate. While the message was private and between friends, the matter escalated rapidly after it was shown to the girl’s father, an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer in Karnataka. The Ashoknagar Police in Bengaluru thereafter registered a case against the boy, and seized his laptop and mobile phone.
The legal action threatened to derail his future as he was then preparing to represent an Under-19 cricket team in Tamil Nadu.
He then approached the court for quashing the criminal proceedings.
Describing the incident as a “fleeting digital compliment” which soon snowballed into a serious criminal prosecution, Justice M. Nagaprasanna on 21 July quashed the FIR and ordered the immediate return of the petitioner’s seized electronic devices.
A central theme of the court’s order was the evolving nature of communication among youngsters. Justice Nagaprasanna noted that the petitioner was likely “carried away by youthful exuberance” and the characteristic informality of the digital age. He observed that the expression, while “colloquial”, belongs to the “idiom of contemporary youth”.
“The young increasingly communicate in abbreviations, informal phrases and expressions peculiar to the digital age, often without pausing to contemplate that a casual word, typed in a fleeting moment, may one day drag them into the unforgiving web of criminal proceedings,” the judge remarked in his oral order.
Significantly, there is no series of messages, no repetition, no threat, no pursuit, no demand and no further communication of an objectionable nature, he said.
He also warned that “youthful vocabulary” should not, by itself, become a “gateway to criminal prosecution” unless specific criminal ingredients are present.
Further, the court highlighted the danger of the youth being dragged into the “unforgiving web of criminal proceedings” for casual words typed in a fleeting moment.
Indiscretion vs criminality
Before the court, the government pleader, to justify grounds for seeking a probe, contended that be it a classmate or friend, “he has no right to speak on how beautiful the complainant looks on a particular day.”
The prosecution had invoked sections of voyeurism, stalking and insulting the modesty of a woman under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023.
However, the court dismantled these charges one-by-one, describing how “this lone message has become the proverbial fly in the ointment”.
On the charge of voyeurism, the court found no allegation that the petitioner watched or captured images of a “private act” as defined by the statute.
For stalking, the court said that the law requires repeated attempts to contact or monitor a woman despite disinterest. The court noted there was “no series of messages, no repetition, no threat, and no pursuit”.
Given the context of the parties being classmates and friends, the court ruled the message did not disclose the “deliberate intention” required to prove an insult to modesty.
Criminal statutes, the court said, particularly those carrying serious consequences, cannot be set in motion merely because an expression is “inelegant, immature or distasteful”.
“Every impropriety is not criminality; every indiscretion cannot be elevated into an offence; and every awkward expression of admiration cannot be forced into the statutory mould of voyeurism, stalking or insult the modesty of a woman,” it said.
“The expression used, may be inappropriate, indiscreet and best avoided,” the high court concluded, terming the proceedings an abuse of the process of law and concluding that allowing the investigation to continue would not only imperil the career of a young athlete but allow the criminal process itself to become a form of punishment.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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