The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act was enacted on 22 May 2012.
There have been many calls for more stringent laws for the protection of children in India, India has one of the largest populations of children in the world according to Census data from 2011 shows that India has a population of 500 million children below the age of eighteen. Protection of children by the state is guaranteed to Indian citizens by an expansive and elaborate reading of Article 21.
The Act also increased the scope of reporting sexual crimes against children. It expanded the definition of sexual assault to include non-penetrative sexual assault as well as aggravated penetrative sexual assault.
There have been many landmark cases of POCSO in the past like Jarnail Singh v. State of Haryana (2013) has observed that the procedure which is used to determine the age of a child who conflicts with the law as has been provided by the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Rules, 2007, can be followed in cases falling under POCSO Act.
Alakh Alok Srivastava v. Union of India and Others (2018), the Supreme Court of India laid down guidelines to be followed by Special Courts
The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court acquitted a man charged under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) and convicted him under a minor offense of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as, the bench said, “There is no direct physical contact i.e skin to skin with sexual intent without penetration.”With the pretext of giving her [the minor] guava in his house, Satish Ragde pressed her breast and attempted to remove her salwar The police registered an FIR under Section 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty); section 363 (punishment for kidnapping); section 342 (punishment for wrongful confinement) of the IPC; and Section 8 (punishment for sexual assault) of the POCSO.
Later he was convicted and sentenced to 3 years in prison. This judgment was later overruled by the supreme court. The supreme court asserted that to prove sexual assault under Section 7 of the POCSO Act, the prosecution would not be required to prove “skin-to-skin” contact. It asserted that the most important ingredient for constituting the offense of sexual assault under Section 7 of the Act is the “sexual intent” and not the “skin-to-skin” contact with the child. The court further observed “The act of touching any sexual part of the body of a child with sexual intent or any other act involving physical contact with sexual intent, could not be trivialized or held insignificant or peripheral to exclude such activities from the purview of “sexual assault” under Section 7 of the POCSO act”.
Though the POCSO act is welcomed step by the public there are a few drawbacks of this act Child marriage is considered illegal under the POCSO Act, 2012. In India even though child marriage is prohibited under secular law, it enjoys sanctions under certain Personal Laws thus complicating matters. There is an urgent need to train the medical, teachers, judicial, advocates and law enforcement agencies in the POCSO Act. Research, information, monitoring, and sensitizing the public are the biggest challenges.