Minor’s consent invalid, Calcutta HC tells Pocso convict
Times of India | 12 December 2025
KOLKATA: Calcutta High Court on Tuesday upheld the conviction of a man under Pocso Act, saying a minor girl is “incapable of giving valid consent” because a child may not know the consequences of a sexual relationship.
A Sealdah court had in 2018 sentenced the man to life in jail and fined him Rs 2 lakh after finding out that as a 23-year-old he had initiated a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl. The man challenged his conviction in HC saying they had a “love affair” and the minor had filed the complaint after he ended the relationship.
A division bench of justices Rajasekhar Mantha and Ajay Kumar Gupta dismissed his plea and held, “The victim was a minor and incapable of giving valid and legally enforceable consent.”
The minor told the court she believed that the man would eventually marry her.
The survivor’s father is a rickshaw-puller and her mother works as a house help. The girl and the youth were in a relationship since 2014, when she was just 12, and in Nov 2016, they had sex for the first time. The girl’s parents filed a complaint against the youth at Narkeldanga police station in Feb 2017 after they discovered she was pregnant. The girl said in her statement that she met the accused at a hotel in central Kolkata in Feb 2017 and disclosed her pregnancy but he refused to marry her.
“The delay in lodging the complaint was thus based on the love the victim had for the man, and further on the hope that the sexual relationship which started on the wrong and illegal side would be regularised by the passage of time and conduct of the man. A child may not know the consequences of sexual relations… Thus, it is inconsequential as to when the complaint was filed in view of the clear evidence of aggravated penetrative sexual assault by the man on the victim,” the bench held.
To ensure that the minor is adequately compensated, the HC directed that 90% of the Rs 2 lakh slapped on the convict be paid to the survivor. Graphic:
The man was convicted on March 14, 2018 for charges of rape and under POCSO Act. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and a fine of Rs 2 lakh, 90 percent of which was directed to be paid to the victim as compensation.
The survivor and the convict were in a relationship since 2014 when the girl was around 12 years of age and the man was 23-year-old.
In November 2016, they had sex for the first time when the victim was 14-year-old.
She became pregnant in February 2017, after which a complaint against the man was filed at Narkeldanga police station. The survivor was 15 years and four months old. She later gave birth to a girl child.