Consent, Adolescence, and the POCSO Act: Rethinking Protection in Contemporary Society
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The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO Act) was enacted with the primary objective of safeguarding children from sexual abuse and exploitation. The legislation plays a crucial role in ensuring child protection and reflects the State’s obligation to protect vulnerable individuals. However, with changing social realities, the rigid application of the Act has generated significant legal and societal debate, particularly in cases involving consensual relationships between adolescents. This raises an important question: whether the law, in its current form, sufficiently distinguishes between exploitative conduct and consensual adolescent behaviour.
Under the POCSO Act, any person below the age of eighteen years is classified as a “child.” The statute proceeds on the legal presumption that a minor is incapable of giving valid sexual consent. As a result, any sexual activity involving a minor constitutes an offence, regardless of mutual willingness or emotional involvement. This framework reflects a strict liability approach, where once age is established, the issue of consent becomes legally irrelevant. While such an approach strengthens child protection, it also limits judicial discretion in complex factual situations.
In contemporary society, adolescents often form emotional and romantic relationships as part of their natural psychological and social development. Many such relationships are voluntary and occur between individuals close in age. Despite this, the current legal framework frequently results in one adolescent being treated as an offender and the other as a victim, even when both parties acknowledge the consensual nature of the relationship. In several cases, criminal proceedings are initiated not due to exploitation but due to parental or societal disapproval. This mechanical application of the law risks transforming a protective statute into a punitive one.
A notable inconsistency also emerges within the broader legal system. Adolescents between the ages of sixteen and eighteen can, under certain circumstances, be held criminally responsible for serious offences. At the same time, the same age group is denied any legal capacity to make decisions regarding intimate personal relationships. This contradiction raises concerns in relation to Article 21 of the Constitution, which guarantees personal liberty, dignity, and autonomy. Completely denying adolescent agency in consensual relationships may conflict with these constitutional values.
The social and psychological consequences of POCSO prosecutions are often severe. Adolescents involved in such cases may experience disruption of education, emotional distress, anxiety, and social stigma. These consequences affect not only the accused but also those designated as victims, who may find themselves subjected to unwanted legal processes. The long-term impact of criminal proceedings during formative years can be deeply damaging and counterproductive to rehabilitation and development.
Although the POCSO Act is drafted in gender-neutral terms, its implementation frequently reflects gendered patterns. In practice, boys are more often prosecuted as accused persons, while girls are automatically treated as victims, even in cases of consensual relationships. Such patterns reinforce stereotypes and undermine the principle of equality before the law.
Given these concerns, there is an increasing call for legal reform aimed at balancing protection with autonomy. Suggested approaches include reconsideration of the age of consent for older adolescents, introduction of close-in-age exemptions to prevent criminalisation of peer relationships, and granting courts greater discretion to assess maturity, voluntariness, and absence of exploitation. These reforms would not dilute child protection but would instead ensure that the law targets genuine abuse while avoiding disproportionate consequences.
In conclusion, the POCSO Act remains an essential instrument for protecting children from sexual harm. However, its blanket application to all sexual activity involving minors fails to account for the complexities of adolescent development and evolving social realities. A more nuanced legal framework—one that distinguishes exploitation from consensual adolescent relationships—is necessary to uphold both child protection and constitutional freedoms. Reform, therefore, should be viewed not as a weakening of the law, but as a step toward fairness, proportionality, and justice.
