While granting bail to a man accused of raping a 16-year-old girl and booked under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act, the Delhi High Court recently said it was a case of “love affair” between the accused and the girl. On August 27, Justice Subramonium Prasad concluded after going through the statements of the girl who had reiterated at various points of time that she had wilfully eloped to be with the man and the two were staying at Uttarakhand, and following the submission by the accused man’s lawyer that the two were in a consensual relationship. The man had been in jail since November 2021. “Consensual sex between girls who are just below the age of 18 years and boys who are just above 20 years has been in a legal grey area because the consent given by a minor girl cannot be said to be valid consent in the eyes of law. At this juncture, this Court is not going into the question as to whether the petitioner has committed offences under Sections 363/376 of IPC and Section 6 of the Pocso Act or not. This Court is only concerned with as to whether a youngster who is in jail for about three years now should be granted bail or not in view of the fact that all the public witnesses, including the prosecutrix, have been examined,” the court observed. “This Court has been constantly seeing that Pocso cases are being filed at the behest of the girl’s family who object to her friendship and romantic involvement with a young boy and the law is being misapplied in such cases which results in young boys, who have genuinely fallen in love with young adolescent girls, languishing in jails,” the court added. While releasing the accused man on bail, the court further observed, “This Court is of the opinion that if the Petitioner continues to be in jail, the chances of the Petitioner coming out as a hardened criminal are very high. The future of a youngster cannot be ignored by this Court at this juncture.” The First Information Report (FIR) was lodged by the father of the girl after he had reported her missing. Justice Prasad had made similar observations while granting bail to another accused in a 2021 Pocso case in which a 17-year-old girl and a 21-year-old man were purportedly romantically involved and the relationship was being opposed to by the girl's parents over religious differences.
