With over 2.43 lakh POCSO cases pending trial in Fast Track Special Courts (FTSCs) as of January 31, 2023, a new research paper by the India Child Protection Fund (ICPF) has estimated that each of the over 1,000 such courts in the country are currently clearing just 28 cases on average every year, as opposed to the initially envisioned 165 cases per year.
FTSCs were set up in 2019, specifically for trying cases related to sexual offences, particularly those under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. The idea was to allow these special courts to exclusively deal with these cases in order to fulfil the mandate of finishing trial in one year.
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