Time for amendment of law to deal with complaints by third parties under POCSO Act : SC judge

Kolkata: Supreme Court judge Justice Indira Banerjee Saturday said the time may have come for an amendment of the law to deal with complaints lodged by third parties under the POCSO Act relating to relationships between persons who are at the threshold of attaining 18 years of age or have just crossed that mark.

There have been allegations of misuse of the provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act in some cases by relatives of such youngsters involved in a relationship.

Justice Banerjee said that there are cases under the POCSO Act which are on affairs between college students – one who is 17 years and 11 months of age and the other of the same class who is 18 years and one month old.

”Is age only a number? Is there much difference between a person who is 17 and half years of age and another who is 18 years and one month? I mention this in the context of certain laws for the protection of children which are interpreted by the judicial officers,” she said at a forum here on ‘Raising Awareness on Human Trafficking and Child Welfare’. Under the Juvenile Justice Act anyone below 18 years of age is a child, she said.

”Just as the Juvenile Justice Act of 2000 had been amended in 2015 to bring in the concept of heinous crimes …. Perhaps time has come to think of an amendment to the law to deal with such cases where complaints are lodged at the instance of third parties, (who are) not even the parties who are actually involved in the relationships” she said. Stating that the welfare of children, their rights, and what constitutes child abuse are complex issues, she said that there are multi-dimensional concepts of what is in the interest of a child.

”It has to be assessed with a sensitive approach having regard to the background and the situation of the child,” she said.

Justice Banerjee, who was a judge of the Calcutta High Court till August 2016, said that West Bengal is a source, transit point, and destination of human trafficking.

She said that trafficking is at present the third largest organized transnational crime after smuggling of arms and drugs. International organizations, governments, NGOs, and civil societies have been focussing their attention to the problem of trafficking and have been trying to devise ways and means of effectively checking human trafficking, she added.