In Re: Right to Privacy of Adolescents
Background
This suo motu case was initiated after objectionable observations by the Calcutta High Court, which had quashed a man's POCSO conviction for enticing away and later marrying a 14-year-old girl, on the basis that the two, now with a child together, wished to continue living as a family. In an earlier 2024 judgment, the Supreme Court had already restored the man's conviction under the POCSO Act and IPC but postponed sentencing, appointing amici curiae and an expert committee to study the welfare of the victim, now an adult, and her child.
Decision Breakdown
The expert committee's reports found that the young woman did not experience the original relationship as traumatic, but that the ensuing years of prosecution, her family's abandonment, and crushing legal expenses had caused her severe hardship, and that sending her husband to prison now would harm rather than protect her and her daughter. Invoking its extraordinary power under Article 142 to do "complete justice," the Court held the accused's conviction stands but declined to require him to serve the mandatory statutory sentence, directing the State of West Bengal instead to provide the family with better housing, and to fund the education of both the victim and her child. It also impleaded the Union of India to develop broader, nationwide reforms on adolescent sex education and child-protection accountability, and made clear the order was not to be treated as a general precedent.
Lesson Learnt
In truly exceptional circumstances, the Supreme Court can use its special Article 142 power to withhold even a mandatory minimum sentence where imprisonment would harm rather than serve the interests of the very victim the law is meant to protect, but this remains a one-off remedy tied to unique facts, not a change to the general POCSO sentencing framework.