Supreme Court Refuses To Entertain PIL Seeking To Examine Link Between Pornography & Sexual Crimes

The Supreme Court, on Monday, refused to entertain a petition seeking to formulate a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) by the police to examine the impact of viewing of pornographic material while investigation a sexual offence case. The matter was heard by a bench comprising Chief Justice U.U. Lalit and Justice Ravindra Bhat.  

The petitioner, Nalin Kohli, started his arguments by referring to a recent investigation by Assam Police of Nagaon District wherein a link was established between the four accused(s) who were porn addicts and gruesome murder of a 6 year old girl child. He stated that the accused persons made the 6 year old watch pornography and when she resisted, they murdered her. As per the petition –

"As a consequence of this, the Assam Police has issued Guidelines to be followed by the I.O.s for collecting digital evidence while investigating offences related to rape, molestation and other sexual offences."

He further submitted that the NCRB data only focused on numbers of the crime and not qualitative analysis and possible reasoning behind the crime committed. Further, he stated that this plea sought to prevent crimes from happening. 

However, Justice Bhat was not convinced with the arguments and stated that NCRB was only for crime records and not for qualitative analysis. He further opined that if the court passed a direction of this nature then there would be other crimes which might have links with certain other things and the entire process would be extremely cumbersome. 

To this, Kohli gave an example of the case of Prajwala v. Union of India where a 'victim protection protocol' was made for victims of sex trafficking. He said just like that case, he was praying for an SOP. However, CJI noted–

"Prajwala was that if there a video of a girl was uploaded, the reputation of the girl takes a beating so one of the areas was that if there could be an automatic screening of such material when it was getting uploaded...That is different because intent is to save the reputation...For Individual cases, saying that someone watching this caused the crime is one thing. You want to have data and come to conclusion, which would be in a nature of assessment but that is a matter of individual cases. This is a tiger which if is let loose, then how do we control it?"

Further, Justice Bhat added–

"This is an SOP for how to go about it in each case. You're asking for a separate database. These are rape perpetrators for one case. So for each crime will we have a different database? What you're asking is surveillance of data. Apart from the unmanageability of this, if something uploaded is so offensive, government has enough arsenal to prevent the same."

When the petitioner pointed that India had the highest number of pornography viewers, Justice Bhat added

"India also has the largest users of internet. It is not the subject matter but where it is likely to lead to. In 1990, in a US court, there was plea to ban internet to certain section of people to reduce porn. I think it's US v. Reno. There the Supreme Court said that we can't do it. Justice Kennedy used an interesting phrase that- We can't set the house on fire to roast a pig." 

The plea was accordingly dismissed as withdrawn. 

The plea had also argued that it was imperative for procedure/guideline be put in place to enable the authorities take proactive steps towards tackling the menace of crimes against children and women.

"It is not surprising that news articles as well as police investigations on rape and murder are increasingly pointing towards the existence of a link between watching pornographic content and/ or sexually explicit content particularly of a violent / non-consensual nature that appear to have acted as a stimulus for committing rape and/or sexual assault, and thereafter even murder, in an attempt to eliminate evidence," the plea stated.

Case Title: Nalin Kohli@ Nalin Satyakam Kohli V. Union Of India & Others

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