Sunday, April 29, 2012

UNDER-AGE SEX AND SEXUAL OFFENCES


One decision the Union Cabinet is likely to take as per media reports has my whole-hearted support. I am sure the largest Opposition party will also back the decision. The UPA Government is thinking of introducing a bill in the Parliament to make sexual intercourse and even “contact with sexual intent” with a person below the age of eighteen illegal. I have always wondered why a PIL was not filed in the Supreme Court by some conscientious social worker or Women’s body to urge use of its special powers under Article 142 to make the “age of consent” 18, not 16 as now when for all practical purposes a person under eighteen is considered a ‘minor’. When parents marrying away a girl under eighteen invites prosecution, a someone who forces a girl of sixteen to have sex with him escapes the punishment for ‘statutory rape’ because clever defence lawyers manage to convince judges that the girl had consented more often than not with a retraction of the girl’s statement in the court under threat or offer of reward.

A girl under eighteen has no right to exercise her franchise for election to Punchayaths, State Legislature or the Parliament; she has to wait for attaining ‘majority’, meaning 18 years of age for property transactions; but is supposed to have come of age to give consent to someone for ravishing her virginity and unintentionally producing her own offspring in the process! Larger number of girl children is coming under the ambit of exploitation with their attainment of puberty down from 13-14 to 10 years. Adolescent behaviour characterised by raging hormones and physical changes are thus advanced to younger age-groups. This catapults such immature individuals to higher levels of physical and mental risks following their appearance in the catchment area of exploiters. It is in this very alarming context that certain judges and sociologists are asking for reducing the age of content.

In my opinion the above anomaly with respect to majority and age of consent being rectified is a great thing. Particularly with the lax morals thanks to the leakage of the worst of Western values into our society the youth find it adventurous and ‘modern’ to experiment with physical relationships. With so much contemporary literature including magazine-newspaper articles extolling the normality of gay, lesbian activities and sex with multiple partners as almost the norm we are facing an avalanche of uninhibited sexual behaviour that our cultural moorings would pronounce unbecoming. Incestual relationships are on the increase. Young people joke about relationships which were considered a taboo in the past. Consensual sex even in the Supreme Court chambers of senior lawyers is being defended these days as a right. Police officials and politicians are known to trap/lure minor girls using threats and rewards or both. Domestic helps of all ages are known to be routinely subjected to sexual exploitation. The earlier bill, The Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses Bill (2011) had indeed a provision for consensual sexual activity between the ages of 16 and 18, but the new one drops the caveat, effectively incriminating under-age sex. The proposed law, very aptly include workplace harassment of women employees including domestic helps (who, I understand constitute 30% of the working women), and also sexual assault on male children.

It seems such a statute was under consideration since 2006, and a bill was tabled in Parliament in 2010 and a Parliamentary panel sat on it so far. Being moved by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, the proposed act brings all sexually-determined behaviour including physical contact and advances, demand or request for sexual favours, sexually coloured remarks, showing pornography or other unwelcome physical, verbal or non-verbal conduct of sexual nature under the definition of “sexual harassment”.

There indeed are sociologists who oppose the proposal to make sex with the under-aged an offense making such sexual behaviour some kind of a teenage right. It is this type of sociology that invites trouble to the present generation in the name of psychological evolution and physiological changes. Their averment is that since puberty arrives early young people are getting sexually active at an early age. They say, “Charity begins at home” and rightly so. Similarly, such high thinking should be implemented at the homes of these sociologists over a period of time and studied meticulously, before they exhort the general public to approve it. Actor Rahul Bose’s The Foundation argues that when many boys will go to jail for under-age sex offenses, their partner girls are left back at risky sexual behaviour, and increasing health risks, whatever that means!  There are some psychiatrists worrying about the children “denied” teenage sex “using more dangerous ways of experimenting.” The cacophony goes on like a massed chorus, a campaign of course: “Are they going to punish young people for pre-marital sex?”, “will they now insist on girls wearing chastity belts?”... there are legal pundits quoting statistics since 1860 to 1973 showing the age of consent and consummation were much lower at 10 years, rising to 16. Don' they realise that the progression was due to greater awareness and evolution of human thought. You cannot oppose Rajastan’s child marriages as decadent, and support under-age sex, they  forget.

A Delhi judge appears to be the first to fire in favour of a lower age of consent in his anxiety to let off an Ashok Vihar boy (that has a particular connotation in Delhi – it is neighbourhood accommodating the rich and influential!) rules that he cannot take a hyper-technical view to punish a young man who has sex with a girl under 18 and punish him for statutory rape, agreeing with the defence lawyer that the girl had eloped with the boy and not abducted by him as the prosecution argued. The judge avers that the girl being happily married, though not with each other (!) exposing the culprit and the victim of October 2008 incident the future of both could be destroyed. Being not a High Court/Supreme Court judge, I do not thing this judicial officer has the right to go beyond the scope of the law as it exists today, the far-reaching consequences and visionary projections being not the prerogative of the lower judiciary.

Sadly, the day the report of this welcome statute made the news, the newspapers also reported that the former Haryana Director General of Police S P S Rathore, the classic example of a police official misusing his powers to subjugate a minor girl, Ruchika Girhotra to his sexual desires asking for his with-held pension ordered to be released by the CAT, while celebrating his wife’s birthday gifting her a Mercedes Benz car for which he paid Rs. 9,05,001 for just the fancy number plate CH 01 AM 0001! Rathore was awarded six months' rigorous imprisonment and fined Rs 1,000 by the Chandigarh CBI court in December 2009 for molesting the 14-year-old tennis player on August 12, 1990. Sessions Court, which enhanced the sentence to 18 months imprisonment and on revision the Punjab and Haryana High Court confirmed the sentence. Rathore served his jail term from May to November 2010. He was released on bail by the Supreme Court on November 11, 2010. However, he was asked not to leave India and the case is still pending in the Apex Court. The girl committed suicide three years later unable to withstand his constant sexual harassment, using her brother’s plight as bait, booking him falsely under several offences. Rathore had in total 12 cases registered against the family which eventually moved out of Chandigarh. All that the heartless policeman had got as punishment for the most heinous crime committed was Rs.1000 fine and 6 months imprisonment!

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