Calcutta High Court Issues Guidelines For Adolescent Girls, Boys, Our Legal Expert Decodes

A man was acquitted after being convicted of raping a minor girl with whom he had a romantic affair by a division bench of Justices - Chitta Ranjan Dash and Partha Sarathi Sen at the Calcutta High Court recently. To quickly decode the case for you, the man was convicted of kidnapping and POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act) under the Indian Penal Code last year in September. The court was informed by the girl that the relationship between her and the man was consensual. She shared that the man came from a rural area and wasn't aware that their relationship and marriage were an offence due to her age.

The High Court acquitted the man after the hearing since it turned out to be a 'non-exploitative consensual sexual relationship' but further HC shared a few guidelines for adolescents.

Guidelines By Calcutta HC For Adolescents

The Bench said that young girls should be aware of the right to integrity, they should protect their self-worth and dignity. The Bench as per a report by India today said, "Adolescent girls must control their sexual urges instead of giving in to two minutes of pleasure. Adolescent boys must respect young girls and women and their dignity."

The detailed judgement by the Bench read, "The principal androgenic steroid is testosterone, which is secreted primarily from the testes in men and ovaries in women and small amounts from the adrenal glands, both in men and women. The hypothalamus and pituitary gland control the amount of testosterone, which is primarily responsible for sex urges and libido (in men). Its existence is there in the body, so when the respective gland becomes active by stimulation, the sexual urge is aroused." (Source - Bar and Bench)

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The court further underlined how the responsible gland for sexual urges gets stimulated by our sight, hearing, conversations with the opposite sex, and reading erotic materials. The statement suggested that sexual urges or arousal were dependent on the individual and thus, sexual urge is not at all normal and normative.

Duties Adolescent Males And Females Should Follow

The court suggested a few duties to adolescent males and females. The Court for Adolescent Boys said, "It is the duty of a male adolescent to respect the aforesaid duties of a young girl or woman and he should train his mind to respect a woman, her self worth, her dignity and privacy, and right to autonomy of her body."

For adolescent girls, the court suggested that every female adolescent should protect her dignity, self-worth, and right to the integrity of her body, control her sexual urge, protect her right to autonomy of her body and her privacy, and thrive for the overall development of her self transcending gender barriers. (Source - Bar and Bench)

Legal Expert Decodes Calcutta HC Verdict

We asked our legal expert Shikhani Shah Engineer, Criminal Lawyer, Bombay High Court to decode Calcutta High Court’s judgement. She said, "Firstly, sex education for all genders should be mandatory in schools and also for parents. Since not many parents are educated, they should also be given awareness about sex education.”

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Need To Create Awareness

“Good touch & bad touch should be taught at an early age since children are most vulnerable to being sexually exploited. It’s always a two-way street, both genders have to be educated about the unwanted sexual act. And also counselling would play a major role, schools & colleges should have a special counsellor to deal with parents and children individually,” she added.

Sexual Relationships By Consent And The Age Factor

"Sexual relationship by consent is not amounting to rape because it depends on the consent of the girl or woman but the age really matters. When we are living in a country like India, having a sexual relationship before marriage is still a taboo. It isn't traditionally accepted by society. In this case, the Calcutta High Court has aptly said that the age shouldn't be neglected, also there should be respect for each other among both the genders, I completely agree with the verdict of the court,” the lawyer concluded.

Further, for cases like these, the legal expert shared that for cases like these IPC (Indian Penal Code) has introduced The Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, which was presented in the Lok Sabha. The new Bill includes a lot of parts of the IPC, the key changes are mainly around offences like sedition, terrorism, organised crime, sexual intercourse by deceitful means, the death penalty for gang rape of minor, petty organised crime, murder by a group of persons on grounds of caste or race. Basis the introduced bill, the expert shared that point 69 mentions sexual acts performed by deceit. It states, "Whoever, by deceitful means or making by promise to marry to a woman without any intention of fulfilling the same, and has sexual intercourse with her, such sexual intercourse not amounting to the offence of rape, shall be punished with imprisonment of either 5 description for a term which may extend to ten years and shall also be liable to fine."