POCSO and the Article 142 Exit Door
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack
View all posts by this Author
By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2026-06-10 13:17:19
About the Author
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack
View all posts by this Author
On June 8, 2026, the Supreme Court set aside the POCSO conviction of Tamil Nadu resident Maruthupandi. He had been found guilty of aggravated penetrative sexual assault under Section 6 of the Act - one of its most serious provisions. The Court invoked Article 142. It cited the victim's subsequent marriage to the convicted man, a payment of Rs.10 lakh, and the passage of time.
The Wrong Question
Supporters will argue this was adolescent romance, not predatory assault. That argument has a factual basis. It has no legal relevance. POCSO is a strict liability statute. Parliament deliberately chose not to distinguish between predatory abuse and adolescent romance - because social pressure and power imbalance can make claims of consent unreliable when one party is a minor. The Court did not dispute the facts of the offence. It said it was not entering the merits. A court that refuses to examine the merits cannot act as though the merits were examined.
Marriage, Money, and No Safeguards
The offence was established through the criminal process and survived appellate scrutiny. Between that confirmed conviction and its erasure lies a marriage of uncertain origin and a Rs.10 lakh payment the Court recorded approvingly - without once examining whether the victim's change of position was freely arrived at or financially induced.
More troubling: once the conviction is set aside, nothing protects her if the marriage fails. The money is spent. Family court remedies are slow and expensive. There is no court-imposed condition, no verification requirement, no conditional warning of the kind the Supreme Court itself inserted in the earlier K. Kirubakaran case in October 2025. That bench at least warned the husband that future default would have consequences. The June 8 order offers unconditional finality - to him. To her, it offers nothing enforceable.
The Constitutional Problem
Article 142 exists for exceptional cases. It was not designed to become a recurring mechanism for softening a statutory framework Parliament deliberately enacted. The Supreme Court is separately examining whether the age of consent under POCSO should be reduced to address consensual adolescent relationships. That is the correct route - legislative reform, open debate, parliamentary mandate. Many democracies have addressed this through "Romeo and Juliet" provisions that decriminalise adolescent romance while preserving full penalties for adult predators. India can do the same. Through Parliament. Not through ad hoc Article 142 orders that come with "not a precedent" disclaimers that an increasingly visible pattern has rendered unconvincing.
Two Supreme Court orders. Both Tamil Nadu. Both Section 6 POCSO convictions. Both set aside under Article 142 after the accused married the victim. That is not a coincidence. That is a route.
The Real Cost
Every time the Court intervenes this way, Parliament is relieved of the pressure to act. The law remains unreformed. The exit route remains open. And somewhere, the message is being received by people the law was built to deter.
The Court called it complete justice. For the accused, it is. For the next minor whose case may never reach a courtroom because the exit route is now visible, it is something else entirely. It is erosion of the law, one exceptional case at a time.
