MUMBAI: Calling one's own wife a "prostitute" amounts to "insulting the modesty of a woman", said the Bombay high court at Aurangabad and directed that police were at liberty to probe whether such case was made against a man, but equally significantly the court held that sending "abusive messages" on WhatsApp would "not amount to utterance of obscene words at a public place" and quashed a case under section 294 of the IPC against him.

Under Section 294, IPC it is an offence when a person "does any obscene act in any public place." It attracts a sentence of up to three months' jail term.

The man was accused by his wife in 2018 and a case registered against him under Section 294 IPC and two other offences which are bailable.

The couple was married in 2017.

He had moved for having the case quashed. The matter was heard by a bench of Justices TN Nalawade and MG Sewlikar which on March 11 held the social media platform of sending texts would not qualify as ""public place" for the offence to stick.

Citing "literature published on the Website" the

bench held that it "clearly indicates that the WhatsApp messages sent by one person to another are end-to-end encrypted which means, only the sender of the message and the recipient of the message can read the messages. It also claims that nobody in between, not even WhatsApp, can read these messages. These messages are secured with lock and only the recipient andsender have special key needed to unlock and read them". Thus it is "abundantly clearly that such types of messages are strictly personal messages and nobody even the WhatsApp can have access to these messages which means nobody except the sender and the recipient can read the messages."

The bench, however, said, "If these messages had been posted on WhatsApp Group, in that case they could have been called as public place because all the members of the group will have access to those messages". But that was not the case against the 33-year-old husband by his 25-year-old wife.

But the HC said, "It appears he called her a prostitute. To call a woman, even if she is, one’s own wife a prostitute and to call her that she earns money by indulging in prostitution amounts to insulting the modesty of a woman. Therefore, there is prima-facie evidence to indicate that the ofence falls under Section 509 of the IPC. In view of this, FIR is quashed to the extent of Section 294 of IPC. However, the prosecution is at liberty to carry out investigation to ascertain whether the ofence under Section 509 of the IPC is made out," said the bench.

Under section 509, IPC for an offence to insult a woman's modesty, the punishment is up to a year's imprisonment.