Supreme Court to pronounce verdict in suo moto case concerning right to privacy of adolescents on Tuesday

New Delhi: The Supreme Court will pronounce on Tuesday its verdict in a suo moto case concerning the right to privacy of adolescents in the wake of “sweeping observations” made in a Calcutta High Court ruling advising “adolescent girls to learn how to control their sexual urges.”

As per the causelist published on the website of the apex court, a bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Augustine George Masih will deliver its judgment on August 20, including on the appeal filed by the West Bengal government against the controversial high court ruling.

In December last year, the top court had exercised suo moto (on its own motion) cognizance due to “highly objectionable and completely unwarranted” findings recorded by the Calcutta High Court suggesting “every female adolescent” to “control sexual urge/urges as in the eyes of the society she is the loser when she gives in to enjoy the sexual pleasure of hardly two minutes.”

The observations were made by a division bench of the Calcutta High Court as it dealt with an appeal against conviction under Sections 363 and 366 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860 as well as Section 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO) Act.

Justices Chitta Ranjan Das and Partha Sarathi Sen overturned an earlier order by a lower court sentencing a teenager to 20 years imprisonment for having sex with his romantic partner, who is also a minor.

The division bench acquitted the teenager boy after the minor girl, also a teenager, admitted that the physical relations were consensual since both had decided to marry each other at a later stage. She also admitted that neither she nor her romantic partner, both hailing from remote rural areas, were aware that 18 was the official age of sexual relationship as per Indian law.

“In the appeal against conviction, the High Court was called upon to adjudicate only on the merits of the appeal and nothing else. But we find that the High Court has discussed so many issues which were irrelevant. Prima facie, we are of the view that while writing a judgment in such an appeal, the Hon’ble Judges are not expected to express their personal views. They are not expected to preach,” the Supreme Court had said, as it took suo moto cognizance of the issue.

It had appointed senior advocate Madhavi Goradia Divan as amicus curiae to assist the court.