In Re: Order dated 17.03.2025 passed by the High Court of Judicature at Allahabad in Criminal Revision No. 1449/2024 and Ancillary Issues
Background
The Supreme Court took suo motu cognisance, prompted by a letter from an NGO and separate appeals from the child victim's mother and other organisations, of an Allahabad High Court order that had downgraded the charges against two men accused of taking a minor girl on a motorcycle under false pretences and sexually assaulting her near a culvert (the assault was interrupted only because witnesses arrived after hearing her scream). The trial court had originally summoned the accused for attempt to rape under Section 376 IPC read with the POCSO Act, but the High Court modified this to lesser charges, holding the acts amounted only to "preparation," not "attempt," to commit rape.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that the High Court had misapplied the settled legal distinction between "preparation" (deliberating and arranging means) and "attempt" (execution of the criminal intent that falls short of completion), since the accused had already taken concrete steps toward the assault and were stopped only by the intervention of bystanders, this constituted a prima facie attempt to rape, not mere preparation. It therefore set aside the High Court's order and restored the original, more serious summons. Separately, responding to the petitioners' concerns about judicial insensitivity in handling cases involving sexual offences against minors and vulnerable persons, the Court declined to draft its own guidelines immediately but instead directed the National Judicial Academy, through former Supreme Court judge Justice Aniruddha Bose, to constitute an expert committee to prepare draft guidelines (written in plain, accessible language) on inculcating sensitivity and compassion into judicial handling of such cases, to be submitted within three months.
Lesson Learnt
Courts assessing whether an accused merely "prepared" for or actually "attempted" a crime must look at how far concrete steps toward the offence had progressed and why the crime was not completed: an assault interrupted only by outside intervention is an attempt, not mere preparation; separately, the judgment underscores that judicial language and reasoning in cases involving minor victims of sexual offences must be handled with sensitivity, not clinical detachment.