Use of swear words, vulgar expletives don’t amount to obscenity, says Supreme Court

Mere swear words, profanities and vulgar expletives, however offensive or uncivil, do not amount to obscenity, the Supreme Court has said.

"For an utterance to be considered obscene, it must be shown that it was lascivious, appealed to prurient interests and had the tendency to deprave and corrupt the minds of those who are exposed to it. Tested on this anvil, even if all the allegations levelled in the complaint are taken at their face value and accepted to be true in entirety, the same cannot be held to be obscene,” a Bench of Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Vipul M Pancholi  said.

While hearing a petition challenging a Madras High Court order that confirmed the trial court's conviction of him under Section 294 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Bench said that abusive or vulgar language by itself did not constitute the offence of obscenity under the Section and such words, however abusive, unpalatable or uncivil, did not satisfy the requirement of Section 294(b) of IPC.

“It is nobody’s case that use of such words caused annoyance to others in a public place, which is a mandatory ingredient of the Section, much less to the complainant. In the absence thereof, we find that the offence under Section 294(b) IPC is not made out,” the top court said.

The prosecution alleged that the petitioner verbally abused the complainant with vulgar expletives and caste-based slurs during an agricultural land dispute in Tamil Nadu in August 2017.

The trial court found the petitioner guilty under Sections 294(b) (obscenity), 326 (grievous hurt) and 506(ii) (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code, along with provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

The Madras High Court acquitted him of the charges under the SC/ST Act but confirmed his convictions under the IPC, forcing him to approach the top court.