A screenshot of a tweet made by National Crime Investigation Bureau (NCIB) is being widely shared on social media platforms. The tweet says that stating at a woman/girl for more than 14 seconds is a serious crime and can lead to jail under sections 294 and 509 of IPC.
Claim: Staring at a woman for more than 14 seconds is a serious crime and can lead to jail under sections 294 and 509 of IPC.
Fact: There is no exclusive provision in Indian Penal Code that says staring at a woman for more than 14 seconds is a punishable offence. However, staring at a woman can be deemed offensive under Section 354D of the IPC only when one stares with an explicit sexual intention bordering on the definitions of voyeurism and stalking. Also, sections 294 and 509 can be invoked against the person, if his act of staring a woman is obscene and insults the modesty of the woman. Moreover, the woman does not have to wait for 14 seconds to decide if she feels uncomfortable with someone’s presence around her. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
We searched the internet with relevant keywords and found that this tweet is made by National Crime Investigation Bureau (NCIB), a Non-Governmental Organisation with its Head Office in Lucknow.
We then studied aforesaid sections 294 and 509 of Indian Penal Code (IPC). Section 294 talks about offences related to obscene acts and singing/uttering obscene songs/words in public places causing annoyance to others. Punishment for such offences is imprisonment up to 3 months or fine or both.
According to Section 509 that deals with the word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman, whoever, intending to insult the modesty of any woman, utters any words, makes any sound or gesture, or exhibits any object, intending that such word or sound shall be heard, or that such gesture or object shall be seen, by such woman, or intrudes upon the privacy of such woman, shall be punished with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years, and also with fine.
Though both these sections deal with obscene actions intended to insult the modesty of woman, there is no provision which sets the timeframe as 14 seconds for charging the offender. According to ‘The Hindu’, in 2016, Kerala IPS officer Rishi Raj Singh said if a man stares at a woman for 14 seconds, he could be sent to jail under section 354 of IPC. When people criticised him for his non-existent ’14 second rule’ claim, he corrected himself by saying that it’s not the duration of the stare but whether it makes a woman uncomfortable that decides its criminality.
However, staring at a woman can be deemed offensive under Section 354D of the IPC only when one stares with an explicit sexual intention bordering on the definitions of voyeurism and stalking, say lawyers. Also, in Section 354 and its sub-sections A, B, C and D, there is no mention of the minimum time after which staring could be considered an offence. A woman does not have to wait for 14 seconds to decide if she feels uncomfortable with someone’s presence around her. Court Judgements referring these sections can be seen here and here. It is nowhere mentioned about the 14 second limit in the above judgements.
To sum it up, there is no exclusive provision in Indian Penal Code that says staring at a woman for more than 14 seconds is a punishable offence.
