MP High Court Says Blurred Nude Photo In Ad Not Obscene

Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh high court has held that the advertisement that appeared in a local daily featuring a photograph of a nude woman with her private parts blurred cannot be termed obscene.

A single bench of Justice Achal Kumar Paliwal of the high court while dismissing a petition against the chief editor of the local Hindi daily in this regard observed that though body of the lady shown in the advertisement did not have any clothes ‘but, breast and genital parts were sufficiently blurred and some words were also written on those parts.’

“Viewed in/ from any angle, then, it cannot be said that the aforesaid photograph is suggestive of depraved minds and designed to excite sexual passion in persons who are likely to look at them and see them”, the court held.

The bench cited the 2014 verdict of supreme court in a case in which it did not find obscene a photo of yesteryear Tennis star Boris Becker posing nude with his fiancée, with her breasts fully covered with his arms, to dismiss the petition.

In the instant case also, the private parts of the lady are fully blurred and hence, the advertisement has no tendency to deprave or corrupt the minds of people who see it, the court noted.

The case relates to the local edition of a Hindi newspaper in Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.