Karnataka High Court Quashes Sexual Harassment Case Over Urinating Incident

The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday quashed criminal proceedings filed against a man accused of sexually harassing a woman after she came across him attending nature's call near a railway track.The complainant woman had accused the accused man of exposing his private parts to her and making certain inappropriate gestures at her. The Court, however, found that it appeared to be a case where the accused man had made some gestures out of shock when he found that the woman had seen him while he was urinating.Justice M Nagaprasanna opined that this cannot amount to the offence under Section 75 (2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS), which deals with the offence of sexual harassment. The Court, therefore, allowed the accused man's plea to quash the criminal case against him. "The petitioner admittedly, even according to the complaint, was answering a nature's call ... after searching for a public toilet all over and not finding it ... The gesture that the complainant narrates is only a shock that the petitioner saw the complainant, as is narrated in the statement itself. That would not become in the considered view of this court an ingredient of outraging the modesty of a woman under Section 75(2). Permitting further proceedings at the case at hand on the aforesaid score would on the face of it become an abuse of the process of law and result in miscarriage of justice," it said. Justice M NagaprasannaThe 26-year-old accused man was was travelling on a long-distance bus whe