How Far POCSO Has Worked

In one line

The Act did what a statute can do, and its two hardest problems, the age of consent and the length of a trial, are the two a statute cannot fix by drafting.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act 2012 has succeeded in the respects a statute controls. It created offences framed for a child, gender-neutral and graded; it created a duty to report in section 19; it created a Special Court in every district under section 28; it created presumptions in sections 29 and 30; and it created a procedure in sections 24 to 27 and 33 to 40 that a child can survive. Its failures lie elsewhere. Section 35 requires the evidence of the child within thirty days and the trial within one year so far as possible, and disposal takes very much longer; pendency has risen with reporting; the age of consent at eighteen criminalises consensual adolescent relationships and a substantial share of prosecutions are of that kind; the mandatory reporting duty deters an adolescent from seeking medical help; and support persons, special educators and Special Public Prosecutors exist unevenly across districts.

What has worked

A statute framed for the child. Gender-neutral, graded by seriousness, with aggravated forms for the person in a position of trust, and with non-contact conduct made an offence. None of that existed before 2012.

Reporting has risen. The number of cases registered under the Act has risen substantially since 2012, which is what a duty to report is supposed to do, and it is the strongest single evidence that the Act changed behaviour. The honest qualification is that a rise in registration cannot by itself distinguish more reporting from more offending.

The presumptions have shifted the practical burden. Section 29 requires the Special Court to presume the offence under sections 3, 5, 7 and 9 unless the contrary is proved, and section 30 presumes the culpable mental state, rebuttable only beyond reasonable doubt. That answers the disbelief that suppressed these cases.

The procedure has changed the experience of the trial. Statement at the child's home by a woman sub-inspector not in uniform, questions put through the court, no exposure to the accused, in camera, an interpreter or special educator. A child in a POCSO trial is treated differently from a child in any other trial, and that is a real achievement.

The construction has been purposive. Attorney General for India v. Satish is the demonstration: a High Court had read "physical contact" in section 7 as requiring direct SKIN TO SKIN contact, and the Supreme Court restored the conviction, holding that nothing in the Act suggests direct contact is required and that SEXUAL INTENT, not the nature of the touch, is the ingredient. A protective statute is not to be given a narrow and pedantic construction that defeats its object.