Mumbai: While quashing an FIR against a 23-year-old man accused of rape, the Gwalior bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court Tuesday requested the government of India to consider reducing the age of consent from 18 to 16 to avoid injustice being caused to “adolescent boys” under section 375 of the Indian Penal Code.
A single bench of justice Deepak Kumar Agarwal observed that amending section 375 to increase the age of prosecutrix from 16 years to 18 years had disturbed the social fabric of the society.
“Nowadays, every male or female near the age of 14 years, due to social media awareness and easily accessible internet connectivity, is getting puberty at an early age (sic),” the order stated.
This, he said, had led to male and female children getting attracted to each other and resulting in consensual physical relationships.
“In these cases, male persons are not at all criminal. It is only a matter of age when they come into contact with female (sic) and develop physical relationships. Only due to this reason, lawmakers in IPC when it came into force put the age of female as 16 years since they were well aware of the aforesaid facts,” the judgment quoted Agarwal.
“Generally, girls and boys of adolescents age develop friendship and thereafter, due to attraction make physical relationship. But, due to this rider boy is treated like a criminal in the society. Today, most of criminal cases in which prosecutrix is under 18 years of age, due to aforesaid anomaly, injustice is going on with adolescent boys. Thus, I request the Government of India to think over the matter for reducing the age of prosecutrix from 18 to 16 years as earlier before amendments so that injustice should be redressed (sic),” Justice Agarwal noted in his order.
Justice Agarwal was hearing a petition filed under section 482 of Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) for quashing an FIR registered against Rahul Chandel Jatav.
Jatav was booked under section 376 (2)(F)(n) for committing rape on a girl under 12 years of age; 376 (3) and 315 (act done with intent to prevent child being born alive or to cause it to die after birth) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). He was also booked under section 5(L)(O)/6 of POCSO Act and IT Act on 17 July, 2020. A trial for this case was pending before the 13th Additional Sessions judge and special judge POCSO Act, Gwalior.
According to Rahul’s advocate, Rajmani Bansal, the FIR naming Rahul was registered with a delay of six months and was a “cooked-up story”.
Speaking to The Print, Bansal said: “She got into a relationship with Rahul when she was shy of 18 years of age and was about 17.5 years old, but it was a consensual relationship. In the FIR, the girl not only named Rahul but also named another man called Mukesh Chokotia who was known to her since 2016 and she was in a relationship with him.”
Following the court’s verdict, Rahul will be released Friday, said Bansal.
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‘No mens rea’
The FIR against Rahul was registered by the girl at Gwalior’s Thatipur police station nearly six months after the incident. The girl alleged that it was on 18 January, 2020, that she was raped by Rahul who gave her juice laced with sedatives when she reached the coaching class at Yadav Bhawan.
She alleged that Rahul, who was her teacher, sexually exploited her and also made a video of her, threatening to make it “go viral”. The girl alleged that Rahul had established physical relationship with her on several occasions and also gave her a pill when she informed him that she was pregnant in April 2023.
Rahul was arrested by the police after the FIR was registered and has been in judicial custody over the past three years. In the same FIR, the girl stated that she was in a relationship since 2016 with another man identified as Mukesh Chokotia, a “distant relative”. The girl alleged that on the pretext of marriage, Mukesh, too, had established “physical relationship with her”. It was on 16 July at 12 noon that Mukesh came to her locality, snatched her mobile and assaulted her with a stick.
The court observed, “As per the prosecution’s story, the girl was a minor at the time of the incident. This court looking into the physical and mental development of that age group would consider it logical that such a person is capable of making conscious decision as regard his or her well-being besides this as per complaint of prosecutrix, first she was engaged physically with petitioner, thereafter, with Mukesh Chokotia as to the actual act of sexual intercourse. Prima Facie it appears that there was no mens rea involved (sic).”
The court also noted “the proceeding in the case before the trial court will serve no purpose in the peculiar facts and circumstances” and further went on to quash the FIR and consequential proceedings.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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