Konda Hemanth Kumar v. State of Telangana (2026): a customer of a sex worker is not a 'trafficker' under section 370 IPC

When the anti-trafficking provisions of the Indian Penal Code were rewritten after the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, the drafting deliberately separated two distinct wrongs: the act of trafficking a person, and the act of exploiting a person already trafficked. The distinction matters most at the margins — and few situations sit closer to the margin than the man who walks into a brothel and pays for sex. Is he a trafficker? An exploiter? Or neither, in law? In Konda Hemanth Kumar v. State of Telangana & Anr., a Division Bench of the Telangana High Court answered that question by reading the ingredients of sections 370 and 370A IPC against each other and against the role a customer actually plays.

The facts in brief

The matter reached the High Court as a batch of challenges by men described in the FIRs as customers or clients of sex workers, or as persons found near brothel premises. They had been booked under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956, and under sections 370 and 370A(2) IPC. The petitioners' contention was narrow but consequential: a customer is not a trafficker, and the trafficking provisions cannot be stretched to cover the simple purchase of sexual services. The question was referred for an authoritative answer on the ingredients of the two offences.

The question

Two questions sat at the centre of the reference. First, whether a customer of a sex worker can be prosecuted under section 370 IPC, which defines and punishes the offence of trafficking a person. Second, if not, whether and on what conditions he can be brought within section 370A(2) IPC, which punishes a person who "engages" a trafficked person for sexual exploitation. The answer to the first turns on who counts as a trafficker; the answer to the second turns on the customer's state of knowledge.

What the Court held

On the first question, the Bench held that a customer falls outside section 370 altogether. Section 370 targets the person who recruits, transports, harbours, transfers or receives a person by coercion, fraud, deception, abuse of power or inducement for the purpose of exploitation. A customer does none of those things; he pays for a service. The Court drew the line in plain terms.

On the second question, the Court did not give customers a blanket immunity. Section 370A(2) operates on a different footing: it punishes a person who "engages" a trafficked person for sexual exploitation, knowing or having reason to believe that the person has been trafficked. The Bench read "engages" broadly enough to include hiring or availing of the services of a sex worker — but coupled that breadth with the statute's own mental-element requirement. A customer is exposed to section 370A(2) only where the prosecution can show that the woman was in fact a trafficked person and that the customer knew, or had reason to believe, that she was trafficked. Absent that knowledge, the customer remains outside the provision.

The Court was also careful about evidentiary thresholds. Mere presence near a brothel, or the bare label "customer" in an FIR, does not establish the knowledge that section 370A(2) demands. The provision is not triggered by proximity or by the transaction alone; it is triggered by the customer's awareness of the woman's trafficked status.

Analysis

The judgment is an exercise in keeping statutory ingredients in their lanes. Sections 370 and 370A were enacted together but address different actors. Section 370 punishes the supply side — the people who move and hold a person for exploitation. Section 370A punishes those who consume the product of trafficking, but only when they do so with the requisite knowledge. By insisting that a customer cannot be a "trafficker" under section 370, the Court refused to collapse the demand side into the supply side, which would have made the word "trafficker" meaningless.

At the same time, the Bench declined to read section 370A(2) so narrowly that a knowing exploiter of a trafficked woman could escape. The breadth given to "engages" — extending to hiring or availing of services — ensures that the provision can reach a customer who knowingly uses a trafficked person. The protective work is done not by excluding customers from the section, but by enforcing its mens rea: knowledge or reason to believe that the person was trafficked. That is the hinge on which liability turns.

For prosecutors, the practical consequence is that a section 370A(2) charge against a customer must be built on material going to knowledge, not merely on the fact of a transaction or a raid. For the defence, the ruling supplies a clean basis to resist charges founded on presence alone. And for the larger debate about how the criminal law should treat sex work, the decision keeps the focus where the trafficking statute places it: on coercion, deception and exploitation, rather than on consensual transactions with independent adult sex workers.

Why it matters

Anti-trafficking prosecutions frequently sweep in everyone present at a raided premises, the customer included, on omnibus charges under both the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act and the IPC's trafficking sections. Konda Hemanth Kumar draws a usable boundary: section 370 does not fit the customer at all, and section 370A(2) fits him only on proof of knowledge that the woman was trafficked. The judgment does not decriminalise the exploitation of trafficked persons; it locates that liability precisely, and refuses to let the gravest label in the chapter — "trafficker" — attach to conduct it was never meant to describe.

Related on Valkya

• The Supreme Court's May 2026 directions on sex trafficking of women and children
• Sivakumar v. State: section 294 IPC requires a sexual or prurient element
• Sajal Bose v. State of West Bengal: section 528 BNSS quashing
• The Kerala High Court PIL on BNS Section 69

Sources

• LiveLaw, "Customer Of Sex Worker Can't Be Prosecuted For Trafficking Under S.370 IPC: Telangana High Court"
• Verdictum, "Konda Hemanth Kumar v. State of Telangana & Anr."