SC's ruling on POCSO Act
The Supreme Court refused to extend POCSO to adults with mental
retardation. ‘Child’ under POCSO
refers to those below 18 years of age.
Both biological and mental age within
the POCSO framework would have helped extend its beneficial features to another
section of vulnerable persons. POCSO is meant to protect children from sexual
offences. To extend it to adult victims based on mental age would require the legislature to enact the law.
According to SC, there may be different levels of mental competence, and
that those with mild, moderate or borderline retardation are capable of living
in normal social conditions. The onus is always on trial judges to keep in mind
the degree of retardation of victims and their level of understanding while
appreciating their evidence.
Either the government should include the persons with mental ill health
into the ambit of POSCO or they should prepare a new law to tackle such
situations. Hope they act soon.
According to SC, POCSO focuses on children, age cannot include ‘mental
age’. The apex court said that according to Section 2 (d) of the POCSO Act, the
term "age" cannot include "mental" age as the intent of the
Parliament was to focus on children, that is, persons who are physically under
the age of 18 years. The Parliament,
when it made the 2012 POCSO Act, was fully aware of the distinction between a
woman who is a minor and an adult woman who is mentally ill and chose to
protect only children whose physical age was below 18 years.
The verdict came on a plea filed by a 60-year-old Delhi-based lady doctor
whose 38-year-old daughter, suffering from cerebral palsy with a mental age of
6-8 years, was raped by a man in 2010. The man accused of sexually assaulting
the woman had died during the pendency of the case. The victim’s mother had contended that
biological age should not be the governing yardstick and her daughter should be
considered as a child because she is intellectually challenged and mentally
retarded.
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