The findings echo Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud’s call to lawmakers to address the “growing concern” on the criminalisation of adolescents, who engage in consensual sexual activity.
One in every four cases under the Protection of Children from of Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act in West Bengal, Assam and Maharashtra constituted “romantic cases”, where the victim was found to be in a consensual relationship with the accused, a study by Enfold Proactive Health Trust and UNICEF-India has found.
Significantly, the study also found that in nearly half of the “romantic cases” (46.6%), the girl was between 16 to 18 years. The findings echo Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud’s call to lawmakers to address the “growing concern” on the criminalisation of adolescents, who engage in consensual sexual activity.
The study authored by researchers Swagata Raha and Shruti Ramakrishnan looked at all 7,064 POCSO judgments registered between 2016 and 2020 in the states of Assam, Maharashtra and West Bengal and found that in 1,715 cases, court documents revealed admission of consensual relationship between the complainant and the accused.
The study released on December 10 also found that in 1,508 cases (87.9% of the “romantic cases”), the girl admitted to being in a “romantic relationship” with the accused, either during the investigation stage or evidence stage, or both.
“The might of the criminal justice system was instead invoked more often to control and deter girls from being in relationships against the wishes of their family, and to coerce the girls to return home if they had eloped. In a few cases, it also served as a device to compel the accused to honour his promise of marriage,” the report stated.
“Given the narrow definition we adopted for terming it a romantic case — where the victim, her family or any prosecutorial witness admitted the romantic relationship or where the court concluded it was romantic — this number would be much higher if we draw inferences from court decisions,” Shruti Ramakrishnan told.
The study also found that convictions were recorded only in exceptional cases and acquittals were the norm in “romantic cases”. This shows that the courts take a lenient view of such cases even when the legislation does not recognise consensual sexual activity for minors below the age of 18 years.