Aveek Sarkar V. State Of West Bengal (The Community Standard Test Case) Abhedya Rajeev LANDMARK JUDGMENT Thu, Aug 06, 2020, at ,10:21 PM FACTS OF THE CASE: In 1994, German magazine STERN in printed an article with a picture of Boris Becker, a world-renowned tennis player and his dark-skinned fiancée, German actress Barbara Feltus. In the picture, both Becker and Feltus were unclothed and he had put his arms around her in a manner to cover her breasts with his palms. Article pectoris’s Boris Becker as a strident protester of the pernicious practice of “Apartheid”. Further, it was stated that the purpose of the photograph was also to indicate that love champions over hatred. The article with the photograph was published in an Indian magazine Sports World and a Kolkata based newspaper Anandabazar Patrika. Aveek Sarkar, a legal representative filed a case under Section 292 of IPC against the editor, publisher and printer of the newspaper. The “Hicklin Test” to determine obscenity was in question. ISSUES RAISED: Is the “Hicklin test” is suitable to determine the degree of obscenity? What is the correct meaning of the term “Obscene or obscenity” according to Law? RATIO OF THE CASE: In this case, the Supreme Court held that “Hicklin test” is not the correct and applied “community standard test” to determine obscenity. A picture of a nude or semi-nude woman as such cannot per se be called obscene unless it has the tendency to stimulate the feeling or revealing an overt sexual longing. The picture should be suggestive of deprave mind and intended to excite sexual passion in persons who are likely to see it. Only those intercourse related materials which have a tendency of exciting lustful thoughts can be held to be obscene but the obscenity has to be judged from the viewpoint of an average person. In accordance with “community standard test”, the Court held that breast of Barbara Fultus fully covered with the arm of Boris Becker, a photograph, of course, semi-nude had no tendency to corrupt the minds of the people in whose hands the magazine or newspaper would fall.