Can the police act on a single complaint of obscenity and shut an art exhibition?
. Technically the police can act on a single complaint. However, in the context of various decisions of the high court relating to freedom of expression in the field of art, the police ought to have been a little more circumspect before asking the exhibition to be shut down-more so where there were contrary points of view as to whether the exhibits were in fact obscene. The high court has categorically held that since art exhibitions are meant for those who voluntarily step into the gallery to view them, they do not constitute a violation of obscenity under the IPC. -Counsel Amit Desai Do you think the show should have been shut by the police? An installation from ‘Tits, Clits n Elephant Dicks’, the show by Sanjeev Khandekar and Vaishali Narkar Porn in the USA How Does America Handle It? In New York, a photograph by controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, of a tied and bound penis was not censored in the art gallery it was featured in. But thousands of miles away in Hawaii, art
