Protecting Chastity of a Woman: A Revisit

The traditional notion of sexuality has been changed with the assigned role of women as the torchbearer of virtues and morality. A woman has an individual choice which has been legally recognized and society has to respected it. In this cyber age, the making of a threat to upload a private picture or video of a woman by her acquaintance on social media would reasonably be considered to impute unchastity to the woman that would be transgressing her sexual autonomy, undermining her dignity, invading her cherished privacy, and insulting her sexual character, even though they may in a relationship for such relationship would not end on any right to bring in public domain. Revisiting the law relating to criminal intimidation to impute unchastity of a woman by examining a recent judgment of the Supreme Court of India, this paper concludes that a woman's right to privacy, dignity and bodily integrity should be respected.