Remarking that the magistrate should have taken the consent of rescued flesh trade victims before ordering their detention in a corrective facility for a year, a sessions court set aside its order and ordered that the women be set at liberty immediately.
The victims, all adults, had appealed against the magistrate’s order. The magistrate’s order of May had reasoned that no one had come to claim their custody and hence that they be transferred from the Deonar correction facility that they were lodged in to one in their native of West Bengal. It had also directed the WB facility to do ‘necessary counselling to brainwash the victims’ to detach them from flesh trade in the future.
The advocate for the women had argued that they are all adults and ready to give an undertaking they would not engage in such activities and that the magistrate had passed the order mechanically. He said the women are still detained in the Deonar home for the past two months after the order.
Additional Sessions Judge AB Sharma said in the order that it is almost two months since the appellants are detained at the corrective home against their wish. The learned magistrate “ought to have considered the willingness and consent” of the victims before ordering their detention in a protective home, the order said.
The court also relied on a Bombay HC order and reiterated that the victims are major and have fundamental right to move from one place to another, to reside at a place of their choice or choose a vocation. It emphasised that they cannot be subjected to unnecessary detention contrary to their wish. It noted that the magistrate’s nowhere suggested that the magistrate considered their wish to reside in the corrective institution.
The court further noted that victims are major and the law does not make prostitution a criminal offence or punish a person who indulges in prostitution, but the sexual abuse or exploitation of a person to earn bread is punishable under the law. It added that there is nothing to show that the women were seducing persons for purpose of prostitution or were running a brothel.
