Amend Pocso Act, says Madras High Court

The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act of 2012 will not be supposed to deliver inside its ambit the romantic relationships between adolescents or youngsters. Yet, many children are getting prosecuted below the legislation. It is excessive time that the Act is amended appropriately, the Madras High Court has stated.

Justice N. Anand Venkatesh stated a number of instances booked below the stringent Pocso Act fell below the class of elopement of youngsters. However, as a consequence of police complaints lodged by relations of the ladies, the boys get arrested invariably and thereafter their youthful life involves a grinding halt.

“An adolescent boy caught in a situation like this will surely have no defence if the criminal case is taken to its logical end. Punishing an adolescent boy who enters into a relationship with a minor girl by treating him as an offender was never the objective of the Pocso Act,” the decide stated. He hoped that the legislature would pay attention to the scenario.

Quoting from American professor Jeffrey Arnett’s ebook Adolescence and Emerging Childhood, the decide stated adolescence was related to many psychosocial and developmental challenges together with the processing of intense feelings and first loves. It was additionally important to acknowledge the huge publicity to digital content material which influences the youth.

Justice Venkatesh, nonetheless, clarified that he was neither turning a blind eye to instances the place the sufferer would possibly, below the impact of trauma, persuade herself that a component of consent was current nor scientifically justifying the accused in each case. “That will depend on the facts and circumstances of each and every case,” he stated.

In the current case earlier than him, the decide identified that the sufferer woman herself had filed a memo stating that it was she who compelled the accused, in his early twenties, to elope together with her in 2018 although he was not inclined to take action.

Now, her mother and father too weren’t fascinated by going forward because the case was a stumbling block in getting her married. After analyzing the authorized risk of quashing a case booked below non-compoundable offences, the decide held that it could possibly be executed because the offences had been purely particular person/private in nature.

“It involves the future of two young persons who are still in their early twenties… Quashing the proceedings will not affect any overriding public interest,” the decide stated.