Bombay HC drops trafficking charge in minor's sexual assault case

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court recently dropped a serious charge of immoral child trafficking against a man accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl, after finding no grounds for its invocation against him.

The man had been accused of an offence of procuring minor girls for illicit intercourse with others under Section 366A of the Indian Penal Code .

“Section 366A was inserted in pursuance to a few articles of the International Convention for Suppression of Trafficking in Women and Children,” said Justice Mridula Bhatkar.

“Thus, the offences committed under Section 366A are entirely different from the one under Section 366 of the IPC (kidnapping a woman to compel her to marry, among others). If a person takes the girl from one place to another for the purpose of seducing her for sexual intercourse with himself, then it may fall under Section 366 but it is not one which comes within the purview of Section 366A.”

There should be another man in the picture.

“The words ‘illicit intercourse with another person’ in Section 366A cannot be ignored,” said the court after hearing the man’s counsel Satyavrath Joshi, who argued that the section was wrongly invoked.

After hearing the complaint and perusing witness statements, the high court accepted Joshi’s submission to also drop the charge of sexual harassment under Section 354A of the IPC, since Section 8 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences ( Pocso ) was invoked.

The court brushed aside prosecutor A R Patil’s submissions that at a pre-trial stage there could be no “hair-splitting” by the defence on framing of charges.

Section 366A of the IPC deals with an offence of inducing “any minor girl under the age of 18 to go from a place or do something with an intention or knowing that she will be forced or seduced to engage in illicit intercourse with another person.” The section attracts a jail term of up to 10 years.

Meanwhile, Section 8 of Pocso attracts three to five years of imprisonment.

In 2017, a special Pocso trial court in Islampur had rejected the accused’s plea to delete sections 366A and 354A of the IPC.

Justice Bhatkar held that “a charge is to be framed under Section 8 of Pocso and, therefore, the charge under Section 354A is not required”.

“Section 366A of the IPC requires that the accused should have taken the girl with the knowledge that she will be forced or seduced into an illicit intercourse with another person,’’ said the high court.

Finding no such case being made out against the accused, the court said, “It is groundless to frame a charge under Sections 366A and 354A of the IPC.”