Pocso act (2012): A critical assessment after a decade of its enactment & enforcement

The enactment of the POCSO Act in the year 2012 was the much-awaited watershed moment in the history of the Indian criminal justice system promising to be a great deterrent against child sexual abuse crimes and proving a fast-track judicial mechanism for ensuring speedy justice to the victims & offenders. The present paper analyses the provisions, concerns, challenges and hindrances in the effective implementation of the Act vis-à-vis highlighting the importance of the role of forensic and medico-legal practitioners and allied facets in the successful investigation and prosecution of the cases. This research has its argument founded upon the interpretation of data analytics and statistics obtained from the Annual crime reports of the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) and other similar research done across the country in the last decade. The study showed that while the number of cases steadily increased from 2010 to 2019, while a sharp decline was observed in the number of registered cases in 2020. Among the states, the highest number of cases are recorded in Uttar Pradesh for most of the years. Children in the 16-18 age group seem most vulnerable to sexual assault, with the number of male victims accounting for less than 1%, in any given year between 2017 to 2020. The lack of awareness, social consciousness & response in cases of male child victimization and the large difference between the number of cases recorded under the Act and that of the cases convicted is a testament to the underlying problems of the criminal justice system in dealing with CSA cases despite the existence of POCSO Act for a decade now.