{"id":78520,"date":"2021-01-28T12:04:11","date_gmt":"2021-01-28T06:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=78520"},"modified":"2021-01-28T17:46:56","modified_gmt":"2021-01-28T12:16:56","slug":"mandatory-minimum-sentencing-under-pocso-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/mandatory-minimum-sentencing-under-pocso-act\/","title":{"rendered":"Mandatory Minimum Sentencing under POCSO Act"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Synopsis:<\/strong> Recently Bombay High Court has acquitted a man of sexual charges under POCSO act. The existence of Mandatory Minimum Sentence in the POCSO act is leading to these decisions.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Introduction:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A petition was filed in the Bombay High Court against the decision of the sessions court.\u00a0 The Session Court had convicted a person for the offense of sexual assault under Section 8 of the POCSO Act. The court sentenced him to imprisonment for three years. The person was accused of groping and trying to remove the clothes of a 12-year-old girl.<\/p>\n<p>Bombay High Court in its decision acquitted the person of sexual charges under POCSO act and convicted him for a lesser offense under the Indian Penal Code (IPC). For its decision, HC provided the following justifications:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Firstly,<\/strong> the groping by the convict was not a direct contact i.e. skin to skin.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Second,<\/strong> there are no specific details regarding the removal of clothes of the victim.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Third<\/strong>, the offences under POCSO Act provide for stricter punishment. Thus, punishment requires allegations of a more serious nature and a higher standard of proof.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Before that in a similar case, State v Bijender (2014), Delhi Court acquitted the accused under section 7 of POCSO Act. Instead, it convicted the accused of an offense under the IPC act.<\/p>\n<p>These judgments have a commong reason behind them i.e. the existence of mandatory minimum sentence in POCSO act.<\/p>\n<div class=\"content-box-green\">\n<p><strong>What is the mandatory minimum sentence?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Section 8 prescribes the punishment for the offense of sexual assault defined in Section 7 of the Act. It provides for the mandatory minimum sentence of 3 years and a maximum of 5 years.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Where a law provides for mandatory minimum punishment, Courts cannot prescribe the punishment lower than that.<\/strong><\/em> It does not give any discretion to the court to pass any lighter sentence. Only the statute will determine the sentence.<\/p>\n<p>The sentence is prescribed to act as a deterrent to crime. There are many other laws such as IPC Section 124A, where mandatory minimum punishments have been prescribed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>Case law: J&amp;K v\/s Vinay Nanda<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It was held that if a person is found to be guilty under the POCSO Act, the court has to pass only such a sentence which is reasonable, but it cannot be less than the minimum prescribed by the law.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0What are the criticisms of mandatory sentencing?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Firstly<\/strong>, <strong>It results in more acquittals<\/strong>, as when judges think that punishment for the offence is high, they prefer to acquit the accused. It has been reported by the Centre for Child Law at the NLSIU, Bengaluru.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Secondly,<\/strong> the discretion of punishment is not removed but shifted from the judges to the police.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>Way Forward<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Legal experts are of the opinion that mandatory sentences are ineffective to give a deterrent effect or reducing crime in society. Therefore, judicial reforms such as making the sentencing process more accountable, transparent and recording specific reasons should be implemented instead of stricter punishment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Synopsis: Recently Bombay High Court has acquitted a man of sexual charges under POCSO act. The existence of Mandatory Minimum Sentence in the POCSO act is leading to these decisions. Introduction: A petition was filed in the Bombay High Court against the decision of the sessions court.\u00a0 The Session Court had convicted a person for&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/mandatory-minimum-sentencing-under-pocso-act\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Mandatory Minimum Sentencing under POCSO Act<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":78729,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[1396],"class_list":["post-78520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-soc_5","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Mandatory-Minimum-Sentencing-under-POCSO-Act.jpg?fit=1280%2C720&ssl=1","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704896644},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}