The 2012 Law on the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses (Pocso) is not intended to include romantic relationships between adolescents or adolescents in its scope. Yet many young people are prosecuted under the law. It is high time the law was appropriately amended, the Madras High Court said.
Judge N. Anand Venkatesh said several cases booked under strict Pocso law fall under the teen kidnapping category. However, following police complaints from members of the girls’ families, the boys are invariably arrested and afterwards their youthful lives come to a standstill.
“A teenage boy caught in such a situation will certainly have no defense if the criminal case is brought to its logical conclusion. Punishing a teenage boy who entered into a relationship with an underage girl by treating him as a perpetrator was never the goal of the Pocso Act, ”the judge said. He hoped lawmakers would take note of the situation.
Quote from the book by the American professor Jeffrey Arnett Youth and emerging childhoodThe judge said adolescence faced many psychosocial and developmental challenges, including processing intense emotions and first love. It was also important to acknowledge the tremendous exposure to digital content that affects youth.
Judge Venkatesh made it clear, however, that he does not turn a blind eye to cases where trauma has left the victim to convince himself that an element of consent is present, nor does he scientifically justify the accused in each case. “It will depend on the facts and circumstances of each individual case,” he said.
In the present case, the judge pointed out that the victim’s girl herself had filed a memo stating that she had forced the defendant in her early twenties to flee with her in 2018, although he was not inclined to do so.
Now her parents weren’t interested in going on either, as the case was a stumbling block to their marriage. After examining the legal possibility of overturning a case that was posted under non-composable offenses, the judge determined that this was possible because the offenses were purely individual / personal in nature.
“It is about the future of two young people who are still in their early twenties … The termination of the proceedings has no impact on the overriding public interest,” said the judge.
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