The Madras High Court has ruled that hugging and kissing between young couples in love cannot be treated as a criminal offence under Section 354-A(1)(i) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The Court made this observation while quashing a case against a 21-year-old man, who had been accused by his 19-year-old girlfriend of hugging and kissing her in November 2022 and later refusing to marry her.
Justice N Anand Venkatesh noted that for an act to fall under Section 354-A(1)(i), there must be unwelcome physical contact and explicit sexual advances. The Court clarified that affectionate gestures such as hugging or kissing between two consenting young adults in a relationship are natural and cannot be classified as an offence.
The prosecution stated that the couple had been in a relationship since 2020. When the boy refused to marry the girl after their relationship became known to her family, she filed a complaint against him.
The Court found that continuing the criminal case would amount to abuse of the legal process and therefore quashed the proceedings.
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