‘Skin-to-skin’ contact: AG urges SC to reverse Bombay HC’s controversial verdict

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 24

Terming as “outrageous” the Bombay High Court’s ruling that sexual assault offences under the POCSO Act weren’t made out if there was no direct ‘skin-to-skin’ contact between the offender and the child, Attorney General KK Venugopal on Tuesday urged the Supreme Court to reverse it.

“If tomorrow a person wears a pair of surgical gloves and feels the entire body of a woman, he won’t be punished for sexual assault as per this judgment. This is outrageous. To say that skin-to-skin contact is required (to attract POCSO Act) would mean an accused wearing gloves getting an acquittal. The judge clearly didn’t see the far-reaching consequences,” Venugopal told a Bench led by Justice UU Lalit.

The Bench directed the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee to make available two senior advocates along with advocates-on-Record from its panel to represent the accused as he was unrepresented before it so far and posted it for final hearing on September 14.

The Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court had on January 19 acquitted an accused, holding that groping the breasts of a minor girl over her clothes didn’t amount to “sexual assault” under Section 8 of The Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012. The HC had held that it amounted to “outraging modesty of woman” under Section 354 of the IPC.

Stating that 43,000 offences were registered under POCSO in the last one year, the Attorney General said the Bombay High Court verdict set a bad precedent having far-reaching ramifications for the magistrates’ courts in Maharashtra.

As the controversial order of the Bombay High Court acquitting a man accused of child abuse under POCSO Act created a furore, the Supreme Court had on January 27 stayed it after Venugopal made an urgent mentioning of the case and urged the top court to take suo motu cognisance of the matter. “It’s a very disturbing conclusion,” Venugopal had said.

Later, the Youth Bar Association of India and the National Commission for Women had also filed separate petitions requesting the top court to reverse the Bombay High Court’s verdict.

The top court has already issued notices to the government and the accused.