POCSO Act At A Glance

Child sexual abuse is a menace worldwide with portentous life-long consequences. It is estimated that 20% females and 8% males become victim to this plunder globally. Census of India reported 41% of total population comes under 18 years of age, thus putting the nation under huge burden of child sexual abuse. The actual prevalence of such carnal abuse is under reported due to social, cultural and law ignorant rationalities. To curb this heinous crime Government of India took a great initiative in June 2012 by implementing the Protection of Children against Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. It protects children from all types of sexual abuse, there by safe guarding the interest of a child at every stage of judicial process and defines a child as any person below the age of 18 years. POCSO Act has the provision for child friendly reporting, recording of evidences, investigation and offers speedy trial of offences under special courts. It defines different forms of sexual offences, including penetrative and non-penetrative sexual assault, along with sexual harassment and pornography, and constitutes a sexual assault to be “aggravated” under specific circumstances. This Act underwent amendments in 2019, making it stronger in virtue of punishment standards as per the magnitude of offence thus introducing Capital Punishment. In this article we will review the Principal POCSO Act, reshaping it went through, and finally discussing its merits and limitations.

The present article is based on significant step taken by Government of India towards child sexual abuse. To compile the points, authors have collected literature from library and internet. Many articles have been searched through NIM S University library, and through normal Google search, and Google scholar. The main key words used were POCSO Act, child sexual abuse and sexual offences. All the relevant articles were identified and studied for inference. Authors have reported all the major points that have come up in the authenticated data on POCSO Act.