Mumbai: 11 women and one man were sentenced to two years of imprisonment for outraging the modesty of a 22-year-old woman.
According to a report in Times of India, the convicted were accused of assaulting, stripping and parading woman naked in Sewri in 2010.
A session court in Mumbai dismissed the argument of the defence that ‘outraging the modesty of a woman’ charge does not hold against the 11 women as the IPC Section states “he will thereby outrage the modesty of a woman”.
The court said: “Section 8 of IPC deals with gender, denotes that the pronoun ‘he’ and its derivatives are used for any person, whether male or female. ‘He’ in Section 354 (outraging the modesty of a woman) of IPC requires to be read as per definition of gender under Section 8 of IPC which applies the male or female. So in such a situation, Section 354 of IPC would apply to women also.”
On June 17, 2010, the victim was stripped and lashed by a mob after her brother was arrested for raping a four-year-old girl the day before.
The court said the enraged mob attacked the victim with an intend to teach the family a lesson by humiliating her.
The accused include Shabina Sahaikh (37), ), Rehana Shaikh (32), Mumtaz Shaikh (35Kamrunissa Khan (40), Malati Bhagat (50), Rabiya Koyari (33), Lalmuni Baretha (50), Kalpana Koyari (45), Anita Waghela (30), Damodar Mule (42), Sharda Yadav (41) and Sunita Mishra (40) and were also fined Rs 1,000 each.