The Supreme Court has done a good job of correcting a serious error of interpretation made by a judge in the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court. Believing that sexual assault on the victim child would require “skin-to-skin” contact, It set aside two judgments that Two criminals acquitted of serious charges of sexual abuse against children, even while sentenced them to lesser imprisonment for lesser offences. High Court held Section 7 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses (POCSO) Act, relating to sexual assault on children, in such a way that it was concluded that the acts for which the accused were charged did not amount to sexual assault. The Attorney General of India took the initiative to challenge these two decisions. NS NCW also questioned the court’s understanding of the POCSO provision, arguing that the law does not prevent such dilution due to which the Court overlooked the substantive fact that the purpose of the entire Act is to punish acts contained in sexual intent. The Supreme Court earlier this year showed promptness and sensitivity in quashing parts of the judgment relating to weak interpretation. In one case, the act of groping a 12-year-old girl’s breast over her dress and in another, acts of preparatory assault on a five-year-old were proven at trial. Even after admitting these facts, the absence of physical contact with the girl’s body part was used to absolve her of the charge of sexual assault. In the second case, the court took a softer stand that “holding the accuser’s hand” and “opening the zip of the pants” did not fit the definition of sexual assault.
It was quite clear that the High Court’s understanding was flawed and out of sync with the legislative intent to enact a stringent law to protect children based on the principles found in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Writing for the Bench, Justice Bela M. Trivedi has held that limiting the interpretation of the words ‘touch’ or ‘physical contact’ to ‘skin to skin contact’ would be a narrow and pedantic interpretation of section 7, and if so If the narrow interpretation is accepted, it will defeat the very purpose of the Act. The judgment not only justifies the misinterpretation of the statute but also underscores that the main component of a sex offense is “sexual intent” behind it. Restoring the trial court’s sentence for ‘sexual assault’ in one case and ‘grave sexual assault’ in another, the top court rejected attempts to interpret a law in favor of the accused, when there was no real There was no ambiguity. And in any case, as Justice S. Ravindra Bhat has said in his concurrence, the interpretation should not be destructive to the intention of the law.
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