New Delhi (ILNS): As the Supreme Court sat today to discuss the issue of a Madhya Pradesh High Court judge allegedly trivialising the condition of bail to a molester, Attorney General K K Venugopal told the bench of Justices A. M. Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and Sanjiv Khanna that there is need to educate judges on gender sensitization. He said the high court judge seemed to have been carried away, as this order was nothing less than a drama that must be condemned.
The high court judge had asked a molester to tie rakhi on the victim and promise to protect her. That was the condition for bail. This decision was challenged.
This has become a pivotal case and the Supreme Court will consider guidelines for judges in this regard on November 27. The discussions on permissible conditions which can be imposed while granting bail were on today.
The AG’s comment came on a petition by lawyer Aparna Bhat, who pointed out similar orders by high courts across the country. A plea against this particular high court judge’s order was brought by nine lawyers. The plea states that such orders “objectify women” and is a gross trivialisation of the trauma suffered by the victim.
The “public-spirited” lawyers led by Aparna Bhat have submitted that imposing a condition where the accused would be required to go to the house of the complainant on the festival of Raksha Bandhan and request her to tie a rakhi around his wrist with the “promise to protect her to the best of his ability for all times to come” resulted in further victimisation of the survivor in her own house.