Key Points :
- The Bombay HC on Thursday ordered the immediate release of 3 sex workers facing detention in a correction home since a year
- The HC stated that prostitution is not a criminal offsense, but its public soliticitation is, under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956.
- The HC upheld the fundamental rights of the women to move freely and choose their vocation
The Bombay High Court ordered the immediate release of 3 sex workers detained at a corrective facility in Mumbai observing that prostitution by itself is neither a criminal offense under law, nor punishable.
In an order passed on Thursday, a bench of Justice Prithviraj Chavan said that prostitution is not a criminal offense under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956. “What is punishable under the Act is sexual exploitation or abuse of a person for commercial purpose and to earn the bread thereby. And where a person is carrying on prostitution in a public place or when a person is found soliciting or seducing another person as defined under the Act,” the court said.
The court was hearing a plea filed by the women challenging the order of the The Metropolitan Magistrate, Mazgaon which had ordered the detention of the women in a corrective institution. On November 22, 2019, after the magistrate’s order was upheld by Dindoshi sessions court, the women moved HC with the help of advocate Ashok Saraogi. The Judge quashed the order of the magistrate and maintained that since the women were not being prosecuted under the law, there was no question of them being held in the corrective facility.
The 3 young women, all in their twenties, were picked up as ‘victims’ in a raid conducted in Malad in September last year. The middleman was arrested and booked under the act. The Bench also stated that the women are adults and thereby entitled to move freely and choose their vocation.
The Bombay HC Court was critical of the lower courts and found several “glaring discrepancies” in the raid report, further noting the failure of the magistrate in discerning whether the middleman was running a brothel or procuring women. The HC quashed the orders stating they were “bad in law”.
