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Poverty,
not pleasure, forces women into prostitution: Court
Monday February 14, 2011 11:59:51 PM,
IANS
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New Delhi: The Supreme
Court Monday said it was because of "abject poverty" and not for
"pleasure" that a woman is compelled to indulge in prostitution.
It also ordered formulation of rehabilitation schemes for sex
workers.
"If such a woman is granted opportunity to avail some technical
and vocational training, she would be able to earn her livelihood
by such vocational training and skill instead by selling her
body," said the apex court bench of Justice Markandey Katju and
Justice Gyan Sudha Misra.
While dismissing an appeal by Budhadev Karmaskar against his life
sentence for killing a sex worker, the court said: "Sex workers
are also human beings and no one has a right to assault or murder
them."
Karmaskar "committed the murder in a brutal manner of a helpless
woman and deserves no sympathy from this court", the bench said.
The "society must have sympathy towards the sex workers and must
not look down upon them. They are also entitled to life of dignity
in view of the Article 21 of the constitution and their problems
also need to be addressed," the judges said.
The court order referred to noted writers, including Sarat Chandra
Chattopadhyay, Russian novelist Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and
Punishment", Urdu poet Sahir Ludhianvi and also referred to
Amrapali, the legendary courtesan who was a contemporary of Lord
Buddha.
In the novels of these writers, the court said, sex workers were
shown to be of very high character who sacrificed their body to
earn some bread for their improvised families.
The court directed the central and state governments to prepare
schemes for giving technical and vocational training to sex
workers and sexually abused women.
The court said the schemes should also include the marketing of
the products that would be produced by the rehabilitated sex
workers. In the absence of such an arrangement, things would get
back to the square one as they would not be able to feed
themselves.
The schemes, the court said, should mention in detail who would
give technical and vocational training and in what manner they
would be rehabilitated and settled by offering them employment.
The court issued notice to the central and state governments
asking them to file response stating the steps taken by them on
its directions.
The case would come up for hearing May 4.
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