CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has decided to review pending criminal cases involving consensual relationships among minors, and quash the proceedings in those cases that are found to be against the interest and future of the children involved.
A bench of Justices N Anand Venkatesh and Sunder Mohan directed the DGP to identify cases involving consensual relationships from among the 1,274 pending cases (registered between 2010 and 2013), prepare a list and submit it before it for review. The court has also asked the DGP to come up with a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to conduct potency tests in sexual offence cases and put an end to two-finger tests on victims
‘DGP’s Pocso circular has not percolated into system’
Justice Venkatesh said as many as 1,728 such cases appeared to have been registered in Tamil Nadu since 2010 and of them, 1,274 are still pending. Similarly, 21 cases were pending in Puducherry, six in Karaikal, and two in Yanam (a total of 29). All these cases are either at the investigation stage or trial stage.
“If those cases (consensual relationship) are segregated from the pending cases, it will be easy for this court to deal with them, and in appropriate cases, this court can also exercise its jurisdiction and quash the proceedings if the proceedings are ultimately going to be against the interest and future of the children involved in those cases and if it is found to be an abuse of process of law,” the bench said.
Quashing a case registered under the Pocso Act involving minor children who eloped and had consensual sex, the court said, “…it is a sample case which illustrates that instructions given by the Pocso Committee and the circular issued by the DGP have not percolated into the system.” If really the instructions and the guidelines were followed in letter and spirit, there was no reason why the girl had to spend nearly a month in the home and the boy had to spend nearly 20 days in the Place of Safe Custody.
"What is even more shocking is that both the girl and boy are ‘children’ in the eye of the law and while the girl was treated as a victim, the boy was treated as a child in conflict with the law,” the court said. This case must be taken to be a wake-up call to ensure that such incidents at least do not happen in the future.
This apart, the bench also directed the DGP to instruct all the IGs to collect data by going through the medical reports prepared in all cases starting from January 1, involving sexual offence, and see if any report given makes reference to the two-finger test.
Likewise, the potency test that is done in cases involving sexual offence carries a mechanism of collecting sperm from the offender and this is a method of the past. Science has improved metes and bounds and it is possible to conduct this test by just collecting the blood sample, they added. The bench posted the case to August 11.