The Madras High Court recently observed that watching child pornographic videos will itself not attract offences under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. Justice Anand Venkatesh noted that to attract the offences under the POCSO Act, a child or children must have been used for pornography.
Justice N. Anand Venkatesh made this observation while quashing a criminal case against a youngster who had downloaded and watched child porn videos on his mobile phone; he stressed the need for society to tackle this issue from school onwards.
The judge said, watching porn videos in private, per se, would not attract either Section 14 (1) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 or Section 67B of the Information Technology Act, 2000 which had been pressed against the youngster following an anonymous complaint.
The judge pointed out that Section 14(1) of the POCSO could be pressed only if the accused had used children for sexual acts which was not the charge in the present case. Similarly, Section 67B of the I-T Act could be invoked only if the accused had shared the child porn video with others and not otherwise.
“The Generation Z Children are grappling with this serious problem and instead of damning and punishing them, the society must be mature enough to properly advice and educate them and try to counsel them to get rid of that addiction. The education must start from the school level,” the judge stressed.
