Karnataka High Court rules body-shaming is not an offence of insulting modesty

The Karnataka High Court has ruled that allegations of body-shaming and verbal abuse do not, on their own, constitute the offence of insulting a woman’s modesty under Section 509 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Justice SR Krishna Kumar quashed criminal proceedings against two women in Bengaluru who were accused of using fat-shaming, racist, and vulgar language toward a complainant in August 2023. While the complainant alleged the verbal abuse caused mental trauma and distress, the court found that the material on record did not meet the mandatory legal ingredients required to establish an offence under Section 509 IPC.

Section 509 criminalizes words, sounds, gestures, or acts intended to insult a woman’s modesty or intrude upon her privacy. The court noted that merely insulting a person's physical appearance through body-shaming does not automatically satisfy the legal threshold for this specific criminal charge.