The Bombay High Court has granted bail to a 22-year-old man accused under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, noting that the 15-year-old girl involved in the case was aware of her actions and had voluntarily eloped with the accused and stayed with him for nearly ten months.
Justice Milind Jadhav, while passing the order, remarked that the facts of the case indicated that the prosecutrix had “sufficient knowledge and capacity to know the full import of what she was doing” and that she had “only thereafter voluntarily joined the applicant.”
The man had been in custody for over three years following his arrest in August 2020, after the girl’s father filed a complaint in Navi Mumbai. According to the complaint, the girl left her home on August 8, 2020, and was later traced to the man’s native village in Uttar Pradesh. The FIR was lodged after the girl informed her father two days later about her whereabouts.
In May 2021, nearly ten months later, the girl disclosed to her father that she was pregnant and that the accused was unwilling to marry her. She requested help to return to Navi Mumbai, after which the father and police retrieved her and another woman from Uttar Pradesh.
The prosecution argued that since the girl was below the age of 18, her consent was legally immaterial and the offence under POCSO was made out regardless of her voluntary association with the man. However, the High Court placed significant emphasis on the girl’s own statements.
The girl, in her statement to the police and during her medico-legal examination, stated that she had known the accused since 2019, was in a relationship with him, and had been meeting him regularly. She also narrated that the two had travelled together to Delhi and eventually to his native village, where they lived as a couple.
“In view of the statements of the prosecutrix herself both before the police and during her medico-legal examination prima facie, it is seen that there is no dichotomy in the said statements,” the court noted. “They at this age had a love relationship is prima facie evident from the record of the case. Prosecutrix on her own volition eloped with the applicant and stayed with him for 10 months which shows that she was clear about her actions and decisions though she was below 18 years of age.”
The court also pointed to the inaction of the girl’s family after she disclosed her location, and the prolonged pendency of the case without the commencement of trial. “Though the provisions of the law are stringent in nature, it would not deter the Court to grant or refuse bail in order to secure the ends of justice, more so when the trial has not commenced despite a long hiatus and the case has been pending trial before the trial Court for close to four years,” the bench observed.
The accused was granted bail subject to conditions, and the trial is yet to begin.
