Supreme Court refuses bail to mother who let her minor children paint on her body

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday took a dim view of a Kerala activist-mother who had allowed her minor children to paint on her semi-nude body, as prima facie as act of child pornography and denied her anticipatory bail. The mother Rehana Fatima, who has maintained that children needed to be taught to respect women’s bodies, had made a video of her children and circulated it online.
Kerala police had charged her under various sections of child pornography and obscenity, a charge she denied. The Kerala High Court had earlier denied her plea for anticipatory bail. She had appealed to the top court against this. Her plea came up before a bench led by Justice Arun Mishra. Her case was argued by senior advocate Gopal Shankarnarayan.

At the outset Justice Mishra said that he was baffled by the case which had landed before his bench towards the end of his tenure as a judge. On merits, he demanded to know how a mother could allow her children to paint on her body. “What will you do to your children’s morals? Why are you doing this nonsense?”

Shankaranarayan argued that the mother had taken a consistent position that while men walk around semi-naked, no eyebrows are raised, but a woman walking around similarly is treated as a lascivious and obscene.