Identify pending criminal cases against minor boys booked for having consensual relationships: Madras High Court to police

The Madras High Court on Monday directed the Tamil Nadu Director General of Police (DGP) to identify pending criminal cases against minor boys who entered into consensual sexual relations with minor girls..A special bench of Justices Anand Venkatesh and Sunder Mohan said that such identification of pending cases will enable it to quash all such proceedings if they went against the interest of the minors involved, or if any abuse of process of law was involved..The Court also said it was unfortunate that in most such cases involving minors in consensual sexual relationships, while the girl was treated as a victim, the boy was mechanically categorised as a juvenile in conflict with the law. It was informed that at present, 1,274 cases were pending against minors across the State. "Out of the 1,274 cases, it has to be ascertained as to how many cases fall under the category of consensual relationship. If those cases are segregated from the pending cases, it will be easy for this Court to deal with them and in appropriate cases, this Court can also exercise its jurisdiction and quash the proceedings if the proceedings are ultimately going to be against the interest and future of the children involved in those cases and it is found to be an abuse of process of Court / abuse of process of law," the order said..The Court's interim order came in a habeas corpus petition filed in 2022 by the family of minor girl from Cuddalore district. While the petitioners had claimed the girl had gone missing, it was later revealed that she had eloped with a minor boy as her family had been trying to get her married to someone else. While the Court quashed all proceedings in the case, it noted that often, boys and girls were treated differently by the authorities in such cases."This case must be taken to be a wakeup call to ensure that such incidents at least do not happen in the future. It is sad that none of the stakeholders were sensitive to the fact that both the boy and the girl were under 18 years and both of them are categorised as child under the relevant enactment," the Court said. .In its order, the Court also highlighted a lack of sensitivity on the part of Child Welfare Committees (CWCs) and the Juvenile Justice Board."A victim girl is mechanically detained in a home when it is not warranted and when such victim girl can be sent along with her parents. Similarly, the child in conflict with law is send to the Juvenile Home or the POS, as the case may be, mechanically and they are detained when it is not warranted and the child in conflict can be sent along with the parents by collecting a bond from the parents and imposing necessary conditions to ensure future appearance."The Court thus called for sensitization programmes to be conducted for the CWCs and the Juvenile Justice Boards by the Legal Services Authority and the State Judicial Academy..The Bench also directed the police to come up with a standard operating procedure to conduct potency tests through blood samples instead of semen collection..With a view to ensuring that the archaic two-finger test is discontinued, the Court ordered,"There shall be a direction to the Director General of Police to instruct the Inspector General of Police of various Zones to collect a data by going through the medical reports prepared in all cases starting from 01.01.2023, involving sexual offence and see if any report given makes reference to the Two-Finger Test. If any such report is identified, it shall be collected and shall be brought to the notice of this Court.".Vidhya Reddy of the Chennai based NGO Tulir has been appointed amicus curiae in the case.Advocate Deepika Murali appeared for the original petitioners in the habeas corpus Petition..[Read Order]