The Madhya Pradesh High Court recently urged the central government to reduce the age of sexual consent from 18 years to 16 years, saying that the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act which raised the age has “disturbed the fabric of society”, resulting in “injustice…with adolescent boys”.

Justice Deepak Kumar Agarwal was hearing a plea to quash a case registered against a 23-year-old man who was accused of raping a minor, who came to him for coaching. According to the victim’s claim, the accused gave her juice that made her unconscious.

The man was booked under several charges, including rape, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act and the Information Technology (IT) Act.

In its order passed on June 27, the court directed that the FIR be quashed.

“Generally, girls and boys of adolescents age develop friendship and thereafter, due to attraction make physical relationship. But, due to this rider, boy is treated like a criminal in the society. Today, most of criminal cases in which prosecutrix is under 18 years of age, due to aforesaid anomaly, injustice is going on with adolescent boys. Thus, I request Government of India to think over the matter for reducing the age of prosecutrix from 18 to 16 years as earlier before amendments so that injustice should be redressed,” Justice Agarwal said.

The court further observed that due to exposure to social media, adolescents were “getting puberty in early age” and entering into consensual sexual relationships before turning adults.

Earlier, the counsel for the petitioner had submitted that there was a seven-month delay in registering the FIR in the case. “Besides this, if any intercourse has been done, the same was with her consent, there was no force involved in it,” the defence counsel argued.

The lawyer for the state prayed for the dismissal of the petition, arguing that “it is true that FIR is belated, but at the time of incident prosecutrix was minor”.

“Nowadays, every male or female near the age of 14 years due to social media awareness and easily accessible internet connectivity is getting puberty in early age. Owing to this, female and male child are getting attraction and these attractions are resulting into physical relationship with consent. In these cases, male persons are not at all criminal. It is only a matter of age when they come into contact with female and develop physical relationship,” the court said & dismissed the case.