- In Suresh Babu @ Arakkal Arjunan Suresh Babu v. State of West Bengal, the Calcutta High Court held that a customer of a brothel visiting for sexual needs cannot be held liable for charges under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act 1956.
- The Court further held that the 1956 Act is meant to punish offences related to inter alia, sexual exploitation or abuse for commercial purposes or living on tje earnings of a sex worker.
- In this case, Suresh Babu, an NRI businessman, was arrested during a police raid on January 4, 2019 from a local body massage centre along with another man and 8 women.
- The contention of the prosecution was that the other man was a pimp and the women were prostitutes and they were running a brothel in the guise of a massage centre that too within the vicinity of a public place.
- The Court observed that merely paying a visit to a sex worker as customer cannot be presumed to be living on a sex worker's earnings.
- The Court further observed that in order to invoke such a presumption, it must be shown that the accused was found in the company of the sex worker on some other occasion as well.
- The Court also noted that prostitution per se is not illegal in India and a person cannot be arrested simply because he visited a brothel for sexual pleasure.
- The Ld. Court disagreed with the contentions of the prosecution and quashed the charge sheet and all the material against the petitioner.
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