Delhi High Court Sets Aside Charges Framed Against Mother For Failing To Report POCSO Case Against Daughter

The Delhi High Court has recently set aside a trial court order framing charges against a mother for failing to report offences under POCSO Act against her 16-year-old daughter who was allegedly raped by her father.

Justice Anish Dayal observed that the mother who was herself the victim of sexual abuse by her husband, had become the accused by applying Section 21 of the POCSO Act, wholly insulated from the background facts and circumstances of the case.

“A mother is sought to be prosecuted for delay in reporting of sexual offence on a child by her own husband, despite the fact that the mother herself was allegedly subject to severe abuse, sexual and otherwise, in her matrimonial home,” the court said.

It added that there was a possibility that the delay in reporting the case was only because both the mother and the child were living under immense trauma that they could not muster the courage, space or the spirit to go and report to the police.

“In this case, to not account for the fact that the mother herself who was the victim of sexual abuse, would not care for her only child and for some mala fide reason, not report the offences as mentioned to her by her child, would result in sheer injustice,” the court said.

The FIR was registered in 2021. The father is facing trial in the case. The plea challenged framing of charges against the mother by the trial court under Section 19(1) (reporting of offences) punishable under Section 21 POCSO Act (mandatory reporting of sexual offenses against children).

The prosecutrix had alleged that the father used to sexually assault her on various occasions and had also beaten her. It was also alleged that he had brutally beaten up the mother and threatened her in case she reported the alleged incidents. As per the prosecutrix, the father had unnatural sex with her mother.

Setting aside the trial court order, the court noted that the reason why there was a delay on part of the mother to report the alleged offences was a threat to her own life.

“Only when the child broke down before the psychiatrist and narrated the sordid details of sexual abuse by her father, then the petitioner realized that it is a matter which needed to be reported and ignoring severe threats by the husband and his family, she did that promptly,” the court said.

Justice Dayal also observed that sexual abuse occurring within a household, where a perpetrator is the husband or a man, who chooses to dominate the household, can be the most heinous and degenerate.

Female victims then live under a pall and swathe of fear for their life and personal liberty, the court said.

Perusing international jurisprudence on the issue of mandatory reporting, the court said that such provisions are enacted to ensure deterrence against child sexual abuse and not in order to punish a victim which, unfortunately in a household with domestic violence, is at times inseparable.

“Mandatory reporting laws vis-à-vis child sexual abuse are designed with the intention to stop abuse against a child. There cannot be a straight-jacket formula where complex depraved conduct is involved and, as is the present case, along with the prosecutrix, the petitioner herself was under a threat from the accused person,” the court concluded.

Title: RB v. STATE NCT OF DELHI

Citation: 2024 LiveLaw (Del) 1027

Click here to read order