The Madras High Court punished a 22-year-old man to ten-year imprisonment under Pocso when his sexual acts involved a 17-year-old girl which later turned into marriage. The High Court delivered a forceful decision stating that Pocso explicitly possesses no provisions for consents below age 18.
According to India Today Report, the court stated that a married life between the defendant and the victim does not release the defendant from his previous sexual offense perpetrated while she was underage. Allowing such a defence argument would diminish the reason Pocso stands for because it does not recognize consent before a person reaches eighteen years of age.
The boy lived adjacent to the girl in their community as they developed romantic feelings toward each other. The families entered into heated arguments after her parents discovered their relationship. The girl received a marriage offer from her parents to another individual.
The planned marriage provoked the female participant to seek out her partner and they ran away to Mysuru Karnataka where they stayed at a relative’s place for a short time. The couple came back to their home area after understanding the girl’s parents had filed missing individual records.
A woman police officer recorded a statement where the girl confessed to the accused performing sexual intercourse. Because the victim remained under the legal definition of being a child according to the Pocso Act at the time of the incident the high court refuses to acknowledge consent or elopement as valid considerations. Such criminal offenses merit societal treatment without reducing them to solely individual offenses according to court judgments.
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