MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court on Tuesday suggested the State government to come up with a mechanism to reform teenage sexual offenders in prison. A Bench comprising Justices J Nisha Banu and N Anand Venkatesh said this while hearing a habeas corpus petition filed by a man seeking to quash the detention order passed by the Virudhunagar Collector against his 18-year-old son under the Goondas Act. According to the prosecution, the teenager had sexually abused a six-year-old girl living in his locality and had posted her photos on social media last year.
But the Bench set aside the detention order on Tuesday after noting that there was some delay in considering the representation made by the petitioner against the detention order. It further opined that information technology is posing a great challenge and it has a lot of impact on the mind of teenagers.
The teenagers, who are easily exposed to pornography even from their mobile phones, get confused and misled at an age when they are in the grips of hormonal changes and they indulge in activities without understanding the consequences... The purpose of confining a teenager in prison is not to abandon him and throw him out of the mainstream. All steps must be taken to reform such a person,” they observed and suggested that the State government could formulate a mechanism to give counselling to such offenders in prison so that they are able to lead a normal life when they come out of prison.
“If this effort is not taken, a teenager will lose his entire life and there are all chances that he will become a hardened criminal and such a scenario will neither be helpful to the teenager nor to the society,” the judges added.