POCSO Act Ignores 'Adolescent Autonomy': Rajasthan High Court Suggests Govt To Exempt Consensual Relationships Of Young Adults

The Rajasthan High Court has urged the Centre to comprehensively review the statutory framework under the POCSO Act, in light of the existing gap between the protective intent of the Act and the sociological reality of adolescent autonomy.The bench of Justice Anil Kumar Upman suggested to consider introduction of a clause granting exemption in cases where the supposed perpetrator and victim were young adults of almost same age, in a consensual relationship.It observed that POCSO Act was enacted to protect children from sexual predators. It could not be used to persecute young adults, involved in consensual but socially unacceptable relationships.The Court held that rigidly applying POCSO in a case involving a 17 year old girl and a 19 years old boy in a consensual relationship, ignored the lived reality of adolescent autonomy and converted a protective status into a punitive tool of social regulation.“…this Court would also like to take into account the recent growth of these “Romeo and Juliet” cases which emphasizes a growing concern that the current legal framework fails to distinguish between predatory sexual exploitation and consensual adolescent relationships…This lack of a nuances exception forces the judiciary to treat young adults as criminals, ignoring the reality that adolescents near the age of majority possess a degree of emotional and sexual autonomy that a rigid interpretation of the statute refuses to acknowledge.”The Court was hearing a quashing petition filed by a young man charged with the offence kidnapping as well as “aggravated penetrative sexual offence” under POCSO, in the absence of any such allegations in the statements of the victim or her brother or medical evidence corroborating the charges. Based on Court's perusal of records, it was highlighted that nowhere the victim had alleged any sexual activity or abuse against her by the petitioner. Rather, it was clear that she had left her home on her own, and remained in the petitioner's company willingly while visiting several places during this period. The Court highlighted that at the time of the alleged offence, the victim was 17 years old, and not a child of tender years who could be easily enticed and taken away.The Court stated that by maintaining a strict consensual age of 18 years without any provision for close-age proximity, a category of statutory victims were created who did not perceived themselves as such. In consensual elopement cases, the Act was used by parents due to their disapproval rather than genuine need for child protection. “When a girl of seventeen is treated as a person without agency, the law effectively denied her the right to her own narrative, prioritizing a protective legal fiction over her actual lived experience. This systemic failure to account for adolescent maturity leads to a situation where the legal machinery becomes a tool for familial control and State-sponsored harassment, rather than shield against sexual violence.” In the background of the fact that she left her home willingly, the Court referred to a constitutional bench judgement by the Supreme Court, State of Uttar Pradesh v Anurudh & Anr., in which it was held that there was a need to differentiate exploitative conduct and age-proximate consensual relationships. The Court also referred to law commission reports that highlighted that a large number of POCSO cases were essentially not predatory in nature, rather involved couples who intended to marry. And invoking POCSO in such cases did not serve the legislative intent of the Act, rather became a tool for familial control and state sponsored harassment. The Court further observed the human cost of such mechanical prosecution under POCSO on young adults. It was held that rather than reforming the individual, such incident risked turning the individual into a hardened one, destroying the life of that individual. And law could not be so blind to become an engine of destructing lives.“The state's interest in protecting children must be weighed against the constitutional rights to privacy and individual choice. Without this equilibrium, the legal system is stuck in a vicious loop of criminalizing teenage love, which not only clogs the Courts but also causes severe psychological harm to the very people the statute was intended to protect.”The Court also came down heavily upon the investigating agency for including such charges in the charge sheet without any corroborating evidence and victim's categorical denial of the allegation. The Court held that it was a matter of “profound concern” that the police chose to ignore the primary evidence and filed such a harsh offence. “POCSO Act is a powerful, stringent piece of legislation with a high threshold for bail and contains sever mandatory minimum sentences. Thus, when the police invoke these section mechanically against a young individual in such cases, the law is transformed from a shied for the vulnerable into a sword for prosecution purposes....

POCSO Act Ignores 'Adolescent Autonomy': Rajasthan High Court Suggests Govt To Exempt Consensual Relationships Of Young Adults

Nupur Agrawal

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