Vijayakumar v. State of TN
Supreme Court of India2026 INSC 525Bench: Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice N. Kotiswar Singh
The Supreme Court held that a threat by a man to upload intimate images or videos of a woman with whom he was in a long-term romantic relationship is capable of constituting the offence of criminal intimidation under Sections 503 and 506 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, and the conviction can validly be sustained even in the absence of recovery of the device or the alleged recording, provided the testimony of the prosecutrix inspires confidence and establishes a genuine and credible apprehension of harm. The Bench made a doctrinally important clarification on the operation of Section 106 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (now Section 109 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023): the concept of 'special knowledge' is not confined to physical spaces such as a closed room or a private dwelling, but extends to the intimate domain of a relationship into which only the two parties are privy. Consequently, once the prosecution establishes a foundational fact suggesting the existence of such intimate material and a threat, the burden under Section 106 shifts to the accused to displace the prosecution version, and a bare denial unsupported by any explanation is insufficient. The Court emphasised that requiring physical recovery of the recording as a sine qua non for conviction would effectively grant impunity to abusers who delete, hide, or destroy digital evidence and would defeat the protective purpose of the criminal law in cases of intimate-image-based abuse. However, considering that the incident dated back to 2015 and the appellant had already undergone a significant portion of the sentence, the Court reduced the sentence to the period already undergone while affirming the conviction.