High Court Reduces Life Sentence in POCSO Case, Citing Insufficient Justification for Maximum Penalty

Bengaluru – The Karnataka High Court has reduced the sentence of an accused in a POCSO Act case from life imprisonment to 10 years, highlighting the necessity for valid reasons when imposing the maximum penalty. The 27-year-old accused from Chikkamagaluru had his appeal partially granted by a division bench comprising Justices Sreenivas Harish Kumar and C.M. Joshi. However, the court increased his fine from ₹5,000 to ₹25,000.

The case involved the accused befriending and repeatedly sexually assaulting a minor girl in his neighborhood in June 2016. The girl's mother filed a complaint in December 2016 after discovering her daughter was pregnant. A DNA test confirmed the accused as the biological father. Following an investigation, the police registered an FIR and filed a charge sheet. On June 11, 2018, a special court in Chikkamagaluru sentenced the accused to life imprisonment under Section 6 of the POCSO Act and imposed a ₹5,000 fine for criminal intimidation.

The accused challenged the verdict in the High Court, arguing that the girl's age had not been proven with proper documentation. Upon review, the division bench noted that oral testimony suggested the girl's consent, though legally irrelevant given her age of 12 at the time of the incident. The bench remarked that this indication of consent opposed the imposition of the maximum sentence under Section 6 of the POCSO Act. It concluded that the special court had not provided sufficient reasons for imposing the maximum life sentence.

According to the law at the time of the crime, Section 6 of the POCSO Act allowed for a minimum sentence of 10 years' rigorous imprisonment and a maximum of life imprisonment. The court ruled that imposing the maximum sentence required valid reasons, which were absent in the special court's judgment. Consequently, in its recent order, the court modified the sentence to 10 years' imprisonment.