In a first-of-its-kind case, the High Court of Karnataka on Friday terminated a criminal case registered against a 16-year-old boy under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, by accepting the agreement of the parents of both the accused boy and the 16-year-old victim girl to mutually put an end to the case keeping in mind the interest of the adolescents.
Cannot punish those in love
“The laudable object for which the POCSO Act was brought into effect cannot be forgotten, but that would not mean that it is meant to punish young children who would fall in love and commit such acts which would become punishable under the Act...,” the court said.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the order while taking into consideration the four similar instances of quashing of the proceedings initiated against minor boys under POCSO Act by the High Courts of Bombay, Delhi, Gujarat, and Madras.
However, the court made it clear that “it is s not painting every incidence of sexual activity of any kind that would become an offence under the POCSO Act, with the same brush, but there are cases of the kind, like the one at hand, where the adolescents have indulged in such acts due to lack of knowledge of consequence of law.
Background
Parents of both the boy and girl, who live in the same locality in Bengaluru, had filed separate missing complaints after their children did not return from the college on November 21, 2021.
The police traced them to Chikkamagaluru, and after preliminary inquiry they invoked the provisions of the POCSO Act against the boy, who was granted bail by the Juvenile Justice Board after he spent a few days in police custody. Final report of the investigation was not yet filed.
However, the parents found that the boy and the girl, who were studying in I PU at the time of incident, were classmates in their school, and infatuated with each other, and that led them to Chikkamagaluru.
Though the girl had given a statement before the magistrate that the boy wanted to lure her into sexual relationship, the court noted that the statement does not indicate that the boy had forcibly indulged in any act on her though complaint states that both indulged in sexual relation.
Acts of adolescence
“It would not be inapt to notice that young children or boys who have not yet reached the age of 18, many a time, without realising or being ignorant of the consequences of their act which they perform in the frenzy of youth, emerge as offenders under the provisions of POCSO Act and face serious consequences,” Justice Nagaprasanna said.
“These are acts which are entirely different from acts which become offences under Section 5, which deals with aggravated penetrated sexual assault under the POCSO Act. These provisions are not known to the students who are themselves minors and get infatuated,” the court observed.
