Mumbai: Saying ‘I love you’ is only an expression of feelings and does not in itself amount to “sexual intent”, the Bombay High Court’s Nagpur bench has said acquitting a 35-year-old man accused of molesting a teenage girl in 2015.Any sexual act includes inappropriate touching, forcible disrobing, indecent gestures or remarks made with an intent to insult the modesty of a woman, a bench of Justice Urmila Joshi-Phalke said in the order passed on Monday.As per the complaint, the man had accosted the 17-year-old victim in Nagpur, held her hand and said ‘I love you’.A sessions court in Nagpur had convicted him under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act in 2017 and sentenced him to three years’ imprisonment.The HC quashed the man’s conviction, noting there was no circumstance to indicate his real intention was to establish sexual contact with the victim.”Words expressed ‘I love you’ would not by itself amount to sexual intent as contemplated by the legislature,” the court said.There should be something more to suggest that the real intention behind saying ‘I love you’ was to drag the angle of sex, the HC added.The prosecution’s case is that the man accosted the girl when she was returning home from school, held her hand, asked her name and said “I love you”.The girl managed to leave the place and went home, and told her father about the incident pursuant to which a FIR was lodged.The high court said the case does not fall under the purview of molestation or sexual harassment.Any sexual act includes inappropriate touching, forcible disrobing, indecent gestures or remarks made with an intent to insult the modesty of a woman, the court said.In the present case, there is no evidence that reveals the accused had said ‘I love you’ with a sexual intent, the HC said.”If somebody says that he is in love with another person or expresses his feelings that in itself would not amount to an intent showing some sort of sexual intention,” the order said.
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