Justice Ganediwala this month acquitting a 39-year-old man for groping a minor girl, noting that there was no "skin-to-skin contact with sexual intent" has faced severe flak.
Ashfaq Alam had been in jail for one month in connection with the crime committed in New Delhi and later came out on bail, Aluva Rural Superintendent of Police Vivek Kumar told reporters in Kochi.
The Supreme Court on Monday used the legal term 'inchoate crime' to refer to mere possession of any child pornographic material that it said would constitute offences under the POCSO even if not disseminated further.
A special court in India has sentenced a man to "triple death sentence" for the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl last year. The court deemed the crime "rarest of rare" and declared the accused "extremely cruel and bestial." His mother and sister were also sentenced to two years in prison for helping to cover up the crime.
In a judgment passed on January 19, the Bombay high court has said groping a minor's breast without 'skin-to-skin contact' cannot be termed sexual assault as defined under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
A court in Kerala has sentenced five men from Uttar Pradesh to life imprisonment and an additional 40 years in prison for the sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl from Kerala five years ago. The accused, who were migrant workers residing near the victim's home, were involved in the crime that occurred in 2020. They enticed the girl with the promise of a SIM card and then subjected her to sexual assault at various locations. The court also directed the convicts to pay compensation to the victim.
Following the granting of a three-month interim bail to religious preacher Asaram Bapu, police in Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh, have heightened security measures at the residence of the rape survivor's family. The family, who have expressed concerns for their safety, will now need to inform the police before traveling outside the district. Asaram was convicted in 2018 for sexually assaulting a minor girl in 2013 and sentenced to life imprisonment. His latest conviction in Gujarat in 2023 resulted in another life sentence. The police have deployed a guard at the victim's house, provided personal gunners for her father and brother, and installed surveillance cameras. The police are also monitoring the area and have prohibited unauthorized gatherings. The victim's father expressed concern over Asaram's ability to manage his affairs from outside prison despite his health issues.
Justice Pushpa Ganediwala recently acquitted a man accused of groping a 12-year-old girl's breast because he did not make skin-to-skin contact and days earlier, ruled that holding the hands of a five-year-old girl and unzipping the trousers do not amount to "sexual assault" under the POCSO Act.
The girl had not attended school from January 3, following which an inquiry was done by the school in person visiting her home.
The survivor's father claimed the family had been cheated by their lawyer who did not file an objection to Asaram's bail plea despite getting all the papers ready.
The police said the ordeal began for the student in December 2022, when she was putting up at a city hostel. Assistant Commissioner of Police (Kalyanpur) Abhishek Pandey said the case was registered on Friday after she approached the Kalyanpur police station.
Two persons were arrested for alleged voyeurism after some female students at a private engineering college in Medchal, near Hyderabad, accused the cooking staff of recording them in the hostel washrooms, police said on Sunday.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader B S Yediyurappa, facing a Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act charge, returned to Bengaluru on Saturday and said he will appear before the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on June 17 for questioning.
Govt said these amendments are aimed at discouraging the trend of child sexual abuse by acting as a deterrent.
As per a complaint lodged by parents, the teacher allegedly took five girl students to the washroom and strip-searched them after a mobile phone rang during class at a government girls' higher secondary school on August 2, an official said.
A bench of Justices B R Gavai and Augustine George Masih observed it was pained to say that some of the observations made in the high court order depicted total insensitiveness and an inhuman approach.
According to Tirupati district superintendent of police L Subbarayudu, Nagaraju (24), who is the victim's maternal uncle, lured the girl to a secluded place in AM Puram village by offering her snacks on Friday evening and committed the crime.
The government also took note of pending cases in various high courts and said that 1.66 lakh cases relating to sexual assaults were pending across the country at several stages.
Banerjee had on Wednesday said an amendment to existing laws will be passed in the state assembly next week to ensure capital punishment to convicted rapists.
Chief pontiff of Murugha Math Shivamurthy Murugha Sharanaru, who has been arrested for alleged sexual abuse of two minor girls, was on Friday remanded to police custody till September 5.
Zubair refuted the allegation as 'an absolutely frivolous complaint', and AltNews backed him, saying his work 'hurts those who have weaponised misinformation to subvert the Indian democracy'.
Union Minister Raksha Khadse on Sunday lodged a police complaint regarding the harassment of her daughter and some of her friends by a group of boys at an event in Maharashtra's Jalgaon district.
The alleged crime in the ambulance being operated under '108' emergency service took place on November 22 and two of the four accused in the case, including the driver, have been arrested, they said.
A 54-year-old woman who accused senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader B S Yediyurappa of allegedly sexually abusing her 17-year-old daughter died at a private hospital in Bengaluru due to lung cancer, police said on Monday.
A sessions court in Indore has acquitted a bangle seller from a minority community, accused of molesting a minor girl, noting that the prosecution failed to establish its case even by 'leshmatra' (an iota).
The Madras High Court has asserted that press freedom and privacy are intertwined and that surveillance constitutes an attack on the press, which is considered the fourth pillar of democracy. The court made this observation while addressing petitions filed by the Chennai Press Club and three reporters seeking protection from harassment by a police Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the leak of an FIR concerning a sexual assault case at Anna University. The court highlighted the importance of protecting journalists' sources and criticized the SIT for seizing reporters' mobile phones without justification and for failing to adequately investigate the source of the leaked FIR.
"The act of pressing of the breast of the child aged 12 years, in the absence of any specific detail as to whether the top was removed or whether he inserted his hand inside top and pressed her breast, would not fall in the definition of 'sexual assault'. It would certainly fall within the definition of the offence under Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code," it said.
Justice Jasmeet Singh noted that arguments in court proceedings include assertions doubting the victim's integrity and character while she is forced to be present in the same space as the person who has allegedly violated her.
'If it is not reversed, it will set a dangerous precedent.'
The victim alleged that he was being sexually assaulted for nearly two years, they said.
The police arrested the accused on Thursday and booked him under relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, an official said.
Section 375 (rape) of IPC has an exception clause which says "sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under fifteen years of age, is not rape."
Nearly 3,000 polling booths have been identified as sensitive, and special security arrangements, including drone surveillance, have been ensured at some of these locations.
An FIR has been lodged in this case against the junior doctor of the pediatric department of the SN Medical College and Hospital, they said.
A Bengaluru court on Thursday issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Yediyurappa in the case registered against him under the POCSO Act on March 14 this year.
A purported video showing the boy dancing to a song with four to five men sitting around surfaced online. In the video, the men were compelling the boy to dance with a smile.
A special court in Tamil Nadu's Thanjavur on Tuesday sentenced a PhD scholar to five life imprisonments, to be served concurrently, for sexually assaulting minors and posting videos of the acts on the Internet to make money, officials said.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has brought back Salman Rehman Khan, an alleged member of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, from Rwanda. Khan was wanted by the NIA for terror-related offences in Bengaluru. He was traced to Rwanda and returned to India on November 28, 2024. The return of Khan comes after similar operations in coordination with Interpol, where two other accused were brought back from Saudi Arabia.
The National Medical Commission on Thursday withdrew and cancelled guidelines under Competency Based Medical Education Curriculum in which it had reintroduced sodomy and lesbianism as unnatural sexual offences in the forensic medicine and toxicology curriculum for undergraduate medical students.
