The Supreme Court has ruled that the mere use of abusive, vulgar or offensive language does not by itself constitute the offence of obscenity under Section 294(b) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), clarifying that while such expressions may be uncivil, distasteful or offensive, they cannot automatically be treated as legally obscene.
The Bench of Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Vipul M Pancholi explained on Friday that there is a clear distinction in criminal jurisprudence between obscenity and vulgarity. It held that to attract an offence under Section 294(b) IPC, the prosecution must establish that the words used were lascivious, appealed to prurient interests, and had the tendency to deprave and corrupt susceptible minds.
The Court further observed that vulgarity, profanity or abusive language, however offensive, does not satisfy the statutory test of obscenity unless these essential ingredients are proved. The observations came while partly allowing the appeal of a 70-year-old Tamil Nadu man who had challenged his conviction in a criminal case arising out of a land dispute.
According to the prosecution, an altercation over agricultural land in 2017 escalated when the appellant allegedly abused the complainant with vulgar expletives and assaulted him with a billhook, causing multiple injuries, including a fractured nasal bone. The trial court convicted him under Sections 294(b), 326 and 506(ii) of the IPC, as well as provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
The Madras High Court subsequently acquitted him of the offences under the SC/ST Act but upheld his convictions under Sections 294(b) for uttering obscene words in a public place, 326 for voluntarily causing grievous hurt by a dangerous weapon and 506(ii) for criminal intimidation.
Examining the ingredients of Section 294(b), the Supreme Court held that the prosecution must prove two mandatory requirements: first, that the alleged obscene words were uttered in or near a public place, and second, that the utterance caused annoyance to others. The Bench found that neither requirement had been established in the present case, as there was no evidence that any member of the public was annoyed by the alleged remarks.
The Court emphasised that expressions which merely evoke disgust, revulsion or shock do not become obscene in law for that reason alone. It held that obscenity is legally distinct from abuse or profanity and requires a sexually explicit or lascivious element capable of appealing to prurient interests and corrupting those exposed to it. Since the alleged words were merely abusive and lacked any such element, the offence under Section 294(b) IPC was not made out.
While interpreting the provision, the Bench undertook an extensive survey of precedents governing obscenity jurisprudence. It relied on the Constitution Bench judgment in Ranjit D. Udeshi v. State of Maharashtra (1965), which laid down the “deprave and corrupt” test, Chandrakant Kalyandas Kakodkar v. State of Maharashtra (1969), which recognised that standards of obscenity evolve with changing societal values, and Aveek Sarkar v. State of West Bengal (2014), where the Supreme Court adopted the contemporary community standards test in place of the earlier Hicklin test.
The Court also referred to Samaresh Bose v. Amal Mitra (1985), S. Khushboo v. Kanniammal (2010), Madhanagopal v. Lalitha (2022), Apoorva Arora v. State (NCT of Delhi) (2024) and Sivakumar v. State (2026), all of which reiterate that abusive, profane or vulgar language, in the absence of a lascivious or sexually depraving element, does not amount to obscenity.
Applying these settled principles, the Supreme Court held that even if the prosecution’s allegations were accepted in their entirety, the abusive expressions attributed to the appellant were at best vulgar and offensive and failed to satisfy the statutory ingredients of Section 294(b). The Court accordingly set aside his conviction under that provision.
The Bench also acquitted the appellant of the offence of criminal intimidation under Section 506(ii) IPC. Relying on its decision in Naresh Aneja v. State of Uttar Pradesh (2025), the Court observed that mere threatening words uttered during the course of a quarrel are insufficient to constitute criminal intimidation unless the prosecution proves that they were intended to cause alarm to the complainant or compel the victim to do or abstain from doing a particular act. Since no such evidence was produced, the conviction under Section 506(ii) IPC was held to be unsustainable.
However, the Supreme Court affirmed the conviction under Section 326 IPC for voluntarily causing grievous hurt by a dangerous weapon. Referring to Mathai v. State of Kerala (2005), it held that the complainant’s fractured nasal bone squarely falls within the definition of “grievous hurt” under Section 320 IPC. The medical evidence, including the injury records, fully corroborated the eyewitness testimony establishing that the injuries were caused by the billhook wielded by the appellant.
Considering that the incident arose out of a private land dispute, and taking note of the appellant’s advanced age of around 70 years and his deteriorating health, the Supreme Court modified the substantive sentence to imprisonment till the rising of the court. It also enhanced the fine to Rs 50,000, directing that the amount be deposited within two months.
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