When Physical Intimacy Becomes A Justifiably Punishable Act

By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam 26 July 2025 Recently, a Bombay teacher from one of India's top five schools was arrested for repeatedly raping a sixteen-year-old male student over the course of a year. She allegedly committed the acts at various locations, including five-star hotels. She is also accused of putting the survivor on antidepressants. The teacher has been arrested under relevant sections of the POCSO and the Juvenile Justice Act for aggravated sexual assault and has been taken into custody by the Dadar police. Along with the teacher, her friend has also been named in the FIR. It was her friend who, in 2024, had convinced the minor to keep sexual relations with the accused teacher. The woman, who is still at large, had reportedly told the minor that sexual relations between aged women and teenagers were normal. While 'Cougar sex' is not a rare and criminal phenomenon, it's morally wrong in this case and context. By the way, "Cougar sex" is a slang term referring to sexual relationships between older women and younger men. The term "cougar" typically describes women in their forties or older who date men significantly younger than them, often with a 10-year age gap or more. It's a stereotype that cougars are confident, bold, and seek younger men for casual relationships or sex. Agreed, one cannot and shouldn't be judgemental when it comes to the matters of heart and groin (to use a euphemism), but here a married lady teacher in her 40s is s(exploiting) her young and initially reluctant student who hasn't yet reached the age of not even having consensual sex. This is wrong. This lady teacher's friend is equally at fault to egg the boy on to have sex with her friend, old enough to be his mother. The dynamics of sex are fast changing. While it's not the first case anywhere in the world because instances of lady teachers seducing their young students to be physically intimate are common in the western world because of their different sexual ethos and ethics, it's a rare case in India. Male teachers seducing, even raping, young female students is no longer news in the country, but an 'educated' lady teacher, teaching at a premier school and stooping to this level certainly raises eyebrows. Mind you, even the 'modern' and 'advanced' western world condemns, even punishes, a lady teacher seducing a very young boy. A teacher-student relationship is a sacred one. While teachers falling for students and vice versa is an acceptable universal phenomenon because many such 'crushes' have culminated in marriages, those students were senior students well aware of their future and also the consequences of such a (tricky) relationship. Since sex has become too commonplace in these times and climes, society's sexual morality has also undergone a sea-change. What was a taboo until a decade ago has become a 'new normal' in this age. The collective condemnation of such 'immoral acts' has narrowed down to individual condemnation. Nothing surprises us any longer. The easy availability of explicit materials and their rampant accessibility to the viewers of all age groups have demystified sex. Our collective proclivity to try out 'new' things and permutations in the realms of physicality have emboldened us. Kinks and even outright perversions are not frowned upon. This has given us a new kind of sexual freedom which is at the risk of getting exploited by characters like this lady teacher from Bombay. Having to resist a sexual predator like this female teacher could be a perennial trauma to a young and unwilling boy/girl. If she's a nymphomaniac and so wide-on, she can find many willing and priapic men in her age bracket. Why seduce a young boy and traumatise him? The sexual adventurism of this teacher must be curbed. She should be punished for seducing a minor. Certain relationships must always be respected and whoever tries to desecrate them must evoke condemnation from all quarters. Remember, sex per se is not at all wrong, how it's used and abused should be a matter of concern, discussion and even punishment. The long-lasting negative effects on the psyche of a young boy: Older women who seduce very young men, like Mrs Robinson in the Dustin Hoffman film The Graduate (1967), can cause males lasting damage and "implant the seeds of self-hate and self-harm", according to a professor of psychiatry at a leading British University. If a girl under 16 has a sexual experience with a man five years older, she was considered to be the victim of abuse, said Michael King from the Royal Free and University College medical school in London. Yet if the boy was under 16 and the woman was older, people sniggered and the boy's friends envied him. The experience could damage boys, Professor King told the Royal College of Psychiatry's annual conference in London. When in their 30s they might still suffer psychiatric problems. "They are two to three times more likely to see a psychiatrist," he said. "They are also four to five times more likely to harm themselves if they have been assaulted. Self-harm is the biggest problem. The conclusion is that there is a clear link." Men who were sexually assaulted felt ashamed of what had happened. Those close to them found it hard to believe that they had been forced to have sex with an older woman. "Men can defend themselves, can't they?" This is an erroneous perception. The experience could do lasting damage and lead to such men cutting or otherwise abusing themselves. In short, what we find is that the effects of sexual assaults are very similar to the effects on women. The point is, the portrayal of teenage boys as sexual objects or as members of society whose only interest is sex is pervasive. Many lookers-on would question nonchalantly, whether it’s actually bad for a teenage boy to be seduced by an older woman. Many film depictions of this paint it as a cause for celebration for the boy in a way that is still unthinkable if the roles were reversed and it was an adult man sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. The truth is that any trained child psychologist or psychiatrist will tell you these beliefs are a myth. Just because an adolescent boy might fantasize about having sex with an older woman doesn’t mean he knows what that would mean for him psychologically. Fantasies are very different from reality. Exploitation of a young teenage boy in this way affects him the same way it would a girl of the same age. It will affect how he feels about himself, the woman who abused him, and women in general. Even if his body tells him differently, this experience is likely to be traumatic – especially if the woman who raped him is someone in a position of trust, like a teacher or a friend of the family. Male victims of statutory rape will experience the same feelings of guilt, shame, low self-esteem, anger and other more serious psychological disorders. They will have the same problems with being able to trust, set boundaries with others in the future and the ability to participate in adult relationships in the future. Male victims can blame themselves for their exploitation and struggle to overcome the shame in the same way as girls. They can become isolated and try to cope with drugs, alcohol or high-risk behaviours. The whole problem of this May-December seductive sex emerges with its (later) ripple effects. Physicality is a matter of involvement and intimacy but when it happens purely for sexual gratification, the outcome may often be disastrous. The victim (a young boy) might develop Oedipus Complex and find it difficult to adjust with a woman in his age group. Havelock Ellis, often called the Darwin of Sex, opined that boys, seduced and sexually exploited by much older women, often don't find the (young) girls sexually and intellectually stimulating. They crave older women and that's not always possible. So, they get frustrated and disillusioned with all women. The Freudian Oedipus Complex seriously impacts the lives and relationship perceptions of all those young men seduced by older women. So, we must empathise with boys sexually abused by older women. A cherubic 15-yr-old Rishi Kapoor falling for his smashing lady teacher, Simi Grewal, and chasing her in Mera Naam Joker is good for a wholesome fantasy but it ain't the reality. ----- A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several languages including Persian. URL: https://www.newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/physical-intimacy-punishable-act/d/136304 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism