Feb 14, 2026
Feb 14, 2026
India is a strange Republic.
The Supreme Court of India says prostitution per se is legal. The Constitution guarantees dignity, privacy, autonomy, and the right to choose one’s profession. Yet on the streets, in police stations, and inside courtrooms, the Indian State behaves as if consensual sex between adults is a moral crime that must be punished—not regulated.
This contradiction is not harmless. It is not philosophical. It has a real human cost—to men, to women, to families, to public health, and to an already collapsing justice delivery system.
And the irony? The data the State itself publishes quietly exposes the lie.
What the Supreme Court Actually Said (And What the State Pretends It Didn’t)
Let us begin with law, not emotion.
The Supreme Court has made it clear: prostitution itself is not illegal. What the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act criminalises are associated activities—brothel management, pimping, solicitation in public places—not the act of consensual sex between adults.
The Court has gone further. It has held that sex workers are entitled to:
In plain language: the Constitution recognises agency.
Yet at ground level, the police act as moral custodians, not law enforcers. Arrests are made, names are published, lives are destroyed—without convictions, without nuance, without accountability.
When the highest court recognises autonomy, why does the lowest constable still enforce morality?
Criminalising Men Without Reducing Crime
Every year, thousands of men are arrested under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act.
Drivers. Customers. Hotel staff. First-time offenders. Men caught in decoy traps.
Most of them are never convicted.
But conviction is not the punishment—the process is.
An ITPA arrest means:
The law does not ask whether the act was consensual. It does not ask whether coercion existed. It assumes guilt by gender.
Men are criminalised by default.
This is not crime control. This is social punishment through criminal law.
Rape Data Destroys the Moral Argument
The most emotionally powerful argument against legalising prostitution is this:
“Prostitution increases rape.”
It sounds intuitive. It is also factually false.
Look at India’s own crime data.
Cities that host some of Asia’s largest red-light districts—Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi—do not top rape charts.
Kolkata, home to Sonagachi, consistently reports the lowest rape rates among major Indian metros.
Now look elsewhere:
Rajasthan
Madhya Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh
Chhattisgarh
These states have no organised red-light districts, yet report some of the highest rape numbers in the country.
Why?
Because rape in India is not about sexual availability. It is about power, proximity, and silence.
Most rapes occur:
Rape is not caused by sex scarcity. It is caused by power surplus.
How Legal, Regulated Prostitution Protects Women
Criminalisation does not protect women—it abandons them.
Illegality pushes sex work underground, where:
Legal regulation does the opposite:
When sex work is legal, women can seek help without risking jail.
When it is illegal, the State hands them over to middlemen and pretends it is saving them.
How It Also Protects Men (The Ignored Half)
India refuses to acknowledge a basic truth: men are human beings with emotional and physical needs.
Every year:
Why? Because abroad:
At home, Indian men are told to suppress desire—or risk criminal records.
So they export their money, their loneliness, and their emotional health to foreign economies.
India moral-polices its men domestically and profits from their absence internationally.
The Forgotten Victim: The Customer and the Machinery of Moral Humiliation
There is another truth the system refuses to acknowledge—the customer.
In most ITPA raids, the customer is the easiest target. He is present, identifiable, and expendable. He is arrested, photographed, paraded, and leaked to the media. His name, face, and address are published in newspapers and circulated on television and social media.
This happens even when:
In the majority of such cases, the customer is never convicted. The case collapses. Charges are dropped. Or the trial simply fades away.
But the damage is permanent.
Families break. Marriages collapse. Children carry stigma. Careers end. Mental health shatters.
This is punishment without conviction—moral execution without due process.
Meanwhile, the woman involved is officially labelled as “rescued.” She is taken to a rescue home, often against her will. After days or weeks of confinement, she is released—sometimes without any real rehabilitation, employment option, or support system.
Worse still, adult women are routinely forced to give written undertakings stating that they will “not indulge again” in this so-called illegal or immoral work.
This raises an uncomfortable constitutional question:
If an adult woman has agency, who exactly is appointed as her guardian?
An adult citizen is made to sign an apology for exercising choice, while the man involved is publicly shamed for life—without a conviction.
This is not justice. This is collective moral theatre.
Courtrooms Clogged With Morality, Not Justice
As an advocate, I ask a simple question:
Why are our courts wasting years prosecuting consensual acts?
Thousands of ITPA cases flood:
Meanwhile:
Legalising and regulating prostitution would:
Justice delayed is justice denied—and morality policing is stealing time from victims who actually need the courts.
Public Health: Diseases Thrive on Denial
Sexually transmitted diseases do not disappear because the State closes its eyes.
Illegality means:
Regulation enables:
Trafficking Is the Crime—Consensual Sex Is Not
India makes a fatal mistake: it confuses trafficking with consensual sex work.
They are not the same.
Trafficking requires:
Consensual sex work requires:
By criminalising both under one moral umbrella, India fails at rescuing victims and protecting rights.
Judicial Clarity the State Refuses to Follow: Bombay High Court on Prostitution
Before morality enters the conversation, the judiciary has already spoken.
On Thursday, 24 September 2020, the Bombay High Court, while hearing a plea before a Single Bench of Justice Prithviraj K. Chavan, categorically reaffirmed what the law already states but enforcement routinely ignores.
While observing that prostitution has not been made an offence under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956, and that an adult woman has the right to choose her vocation and cannot be detained without her consent, the Court ordered the release of three adult sex workers who had been unlawfully confined in a Corrective Institution.
The Court rejected the paternalistic assumption that adult women engaged in sex work require compulsory custody, moral supervision, or corrective detention. It held that such confinement, in the absence of proven trafficking, coercion, or force, is illegal and unconstitutional.
The judgment exposed a routine but deeply unlawful practice:
Adult women, labelled as “rescued,” are confined in corrective or protective homes against their will, without any adjudication, without consent, and without a finding of criminality.
Despite this judicial clarity, enforcement agencies continue to:
This is not a gap in law. It is a refusal to obey law.
Articles 14 and 21: When Moral Policing Becomes Unconstitutional
What is happening under the guise of enforcing the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act is not merely social injustice—it is constitutional breach.
Article 21: Life, Liberty, Dignity
Article 21 does not protect only the innocent. It protects the human.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the right to life includes:
When a customer is arrested without conviction, photographed, named, and shamed in the media, the punishment is inflicted before guilt is established. Reputation is destroyed without trial. Family life collapses without adjudication.
This is not procedure established by law. This is procedure invented by morality.
Likewise, when an adult woman is forcibly “rescued,” confined in a shelter, and compelled to give a written undertaking not to engage again in sex work, her liberty is curtailed without crime, without conviction, and without consent.
An adult citizen does not require a guardian to exercise choice.
To impose one is to reduce Article 21 to a privilege granted by social approval.
Article 14: Equality Before Law, Not Equality Before Morality
Article 14 forbids arbitrariness.
Yet under current practice:
This is not classification based on intelligible differentia. It is gendered moral sorting.
If two adults engage in a consensual act:
Such enforcement fails the basic test of Article 14: fairness, non-arbitrariness, and equal protection of law.
Yet enforcement practices operate on shame, spectacle, and social destruction. This is not the rule of law. It is the rule of moral panic.
The Question the Republic Must Answer
Then one question remains:
Whose morality is the Indian State protecting—and at what constitutional, economic, and human cost?
Until that question is answered honestly, India will continue to punish desire, reward hypocrisy, and call it justice.but at whose cost and whats cost?
14-Feb-2026
More by : Adv Chandan Agarwal