Shining Hope 01 July 2020
Yashita Gupta 08 July 2020
Hi!
The action of the police is justified as the Section 2(d) of the POCSO Act defines any person under the age of 18 as a 'child'. This Act provides justice without any gender discrimination as every person under the age of 18 are incompetent to give their consent. Hence, any person involved in any s*xual act covered under the act and the victim involved is under the age of 18, the offence is punishable as it is considered to be a violation of this Act.
The Act does not recognise consensual s*xual acts between two minors or between a minor and a major and the consent is immaterial in such cases.
The Act imposes minimum imprisonment of 10 years for having s*x with a minor.
Although the Madras High Court had suggested on excluding consensual s*x of people above 16 years of age from the POCSO Act or reduce the punishment after looking at the mitigating factors.
I hope this answers your query.