Supreme Court refuses to entertain Nalin Kohli plea to examine link between pornography and sexual offences

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to entertain a petition seeking directions to the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD) to collect data for revealing a link between the viewing of pornographic material and the commission of sexual offences [Nalin Kohli v. Union of India]..While refusing to entertain the plea filed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson and Advocate Nalin Kohli, a Bench of Chief Justice of India UU Lalit and Justice S Ravindra Bhat reasoned that such a direction would be difficult to implement."NCRB only maintains records and now if we start determining what is a crime, then it will become cumbersome for authorities. It is a thin ice. Now you are looking for a tendency. Whether someone is a serial rapist or addicted to this...there cannot be empirical evidence. How many convictions can you show? Our directions have to be implementable," the Bench observed. .The Court went on to note that it had to be careful, since the petitioner was advocating for a kind of surveillance. "You will have to tell us what is the viewership. If it is so offensive, then government has enough arsenal to handle this.".Apart from collection of data, Kohli also asked the Court to direct the authorities to consider formulating a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to include the aspect of viewing pornographic material while investigating cases of rape and sexual assault..The petition claimed that watching pornographic or sexually explicit content, particularly of a violent, non-consensual nature, acted as a stimulus for committing rape or sexual assault.The plea highlighted the increasing incidents of rape and sexual violence, including those by minors against women and children, being linked to the viewing of the pornographic material by research."Because there is a whole body of research that unequivocally confirms that the viewing impact of pornographic and sexually explicit material leads to aggressive behaviour towards women and children in general even treating such aggressive sexual acts as normal," the plea stated.Further, it was pointed out that the records by agencies like the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reflected the number of incidents, as opposed to the contributing factors. .[Read order]