With the advent of the technological age, human relationships have taken on a new colour. The sharing and posting of photographs online has had the effect of blurring the line between the private and the public space. Pornographic photographs are one such form of “publicity of the private”. Only, they hide the violence through which they were procured, staged and presented.
Based on varying degrees of consent violation and violence, one can categorise pornographic images into the following types- rape videos (where the act as well as subsequent circulation is without consent), revenge porn imagery (where the act may occur with consent but its subsequent capture and circulation may be without consent), digitally morphed nudes and spy camera imagery among others. Research suggests that the production and circulation of pornographic images is a gendered crime that finds women as its primary targets.
Since the violence is said to happen online, it is often trivialised for the impact it may have on victims. Victims have reported experiencing very real ramifications in the physical world including threat to physical security, loss of jobs, societal ostracisation and impact on mental health. Despite this, only a few countries like USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Philippines, Germany, France and Israel have focussed legislation addressing the crime. Though India has legal provisions scattered across different statutes, none of them fully address the contours of this crime in its totality.
In this context, the paper would engage with the gendered nature of crime and its impact on victims, the understanding of consent, and a feminist analysis of normative and adjudicatory trends in India along with advocating for a victim-centric approach to justice that respects their right of bodily integrity and privacy. The research is based on doctrinal analysis and ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in district courts of Delhi, India.
