‘Bois Locker Room’ scandal reaches SC; letter petition seeks judicial intervention

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 6

The controversy surrounding the ‘Bois Locker Room’ scandal reached the Supreme Court on Wednesday with a letter petition by three lawyers seeking judicial intervention in the matter.

“This incident raises the issue of not only privacy, safety and well-being of women, but also of sensitisation and counselling of juveniles who are engaging in such conduct,” the letter petition by advocates Anand Varma, Kaustubh Prakash and Shubhangi Jain read.

The controversy relates to an Instagram group allegedly run by teenage boys from certain Delhi schools sharing objectionable pictures of women and minor girls; making obscene comments; and threatening to leak them online.

Terming the incident as “horrific”, the trio wanted the Supreme Court to take up the matter on the judicial side.  It involved harassment of women, they said.

Maintaining that social media platforms have bridged the gap of communication, the letter petition said such incidents proved that it had become a platform of public harassment of women and cyber bullying.

“It is also an easy platform to be conspicuous and share objectionable, obscene and private pictures, chats and other messages,” they submitted.

“This incident raises the issue of not only privacy, safety and well-being of women, but also of sensitisation and counselling of juveniles who are engaging in such conduct,” they said.

“It is appalling how boys as young as 15 years of age glorify rape, discuss techniques of raping and gang-raping women and objectifying them in the most horrendous manner, the letter petition said, pointing out that such acts constituted offences under Sections 67 and 67A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and Sections 506, 507, 509, 465 and 471 of IPC.