Pooja Gautam, Assistant Professor, UPES, School of Law and PhD Candidate NALSAR, Hyderabad.
Introduction
In India, obscenity is a punishable offence under sec 292 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) as well as under some special legislations like the Information and Technology Act. Sec. 292 of IP, any person committing or attempting to do so, ‘shall be punished on conviction with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, and with fine which may extend to two thousand rupees, and, on subsequent convictions, with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to five years, and also with fine which may extend to five thousand rupees’.
As obscenity is dynamic concept and meaning of term fluctuates with time and depends on a contemporary moral norms of a community. Therefore, legislators in India have never attempted to define the word and have left upon the courts to decide on a case-by-case basis whether a given action is truly offensive to an individual or merely unusual. However, in absence of any reliable standard judges have also struggled to establish a clear boundary between constitutionality and public morals. Throughout history, the courts around the world have used a variety of tests to decide what constitutes obscenity.
