{"id":750,"date":"2023-08-08T13:14:40","date_gmt":"2023-08-08T07:44:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/?p=750"},"modified":"2023-08-08T13:14:40","modified_gmt":"2023-08-08T07:44:40","slug":"supreme-court-holds-that-no-discretion-to-the-court-but-to-impose-the-minimum-sentence-where-it-is-prescribed-in-pocso-cases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/supreme-court-holds-that-no-discretion-to-the-court-but-to-impose-the-minimum-sentence-where-it-is-prescribed-in-pocso-cases\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme court holds that no discretion to the court but to impose the minimum sentence where it is prescribed in POCSO cases."},"content":{"rendered":"

State of U.P. (Appellant) Vs. Sonu Kushwaha (Respondent)<\/strong><\/h1>\n

CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 1633 OF 2023
\n(2JB, Abhay S. Oka and Rajesh Bindal JJ., delivered by Abhay S. Oka J.<\/strong>)<\/p>\n

Facts:<\/u><\/strong> The present appeal has been preferred by the state against the High court\u2019s judgment whereby it concluded that the act committed by the respondent was of penetrative sexual assault which was punishable under Section 4 of the POCSO Act.<\/p>\n

Issue<\/u><\/strong>: Whether the respondent is guilty of an offence of aggravated penetrative sexual assault punishable under Section 6 of the Protection of Children\u00a0\u00a0 from\u00a0\u00a0 Sexual\u00a0\u00a0 Offences\u00a0\u00a0 Act, 2012?<\/p>\n

Arguments on behalf of counsel for appellant:<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

The learned counsel appearing for the appellant\u2013State of Uttar Pradesh has invited our attention to the definition of \u2018penetrative sexual assault\u2019 under clause (a) of Section 3 of the POCSO Act.\u00a0\u00a0 The learned counsel also pointed out that under clause (m) of Section 5, whoever commits penetrative sexual\u00a0\u00a0 assault on a child\u00a0\u00a0 below twelve years, is guilty of committing aggravated penetrative sexual assault.\u00a0 He would, therefore, submit that the High Court has committed an error by\u00a0\u00a0 holding\u00a0\u00a0 that\u00a0\u00a0 Section\u00a0\u00a0 6, which\u00a0\u00a0 applies\u00a0\u00a0 to\u00a0\u00a0 aggravated penetrative sexual assault, was not applicable.<\/p>\n

Arguments on behalf of counsel for respondent:<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

The\u00a0\u00a0 learned\u00a0\u00a0 counsel\u00a0\u00a0 appearing\u00a0\u00a0 for\u00a0\u00a0 the\u00a0\u00a0 respondent\u2013 accused\u00a0\u00a0 submitted\u00a0\u00a0 that\u00a0\u00a0 the\u00a0\u00a0 respondent\u00a0\u00a0 has\u00a0\u00a0 already undergone the sentence of seven years as modified by the High\u00a0\u00a0 Court. He submitted\u00a0\u00a0 that\u00a0\u00a0 now\u00a0\u00a0 the\u00a0\u00a0 respondent\u00a0\u00a0 is completely reformed.\u00a0 He also stated that the respondent has moved ahead in life and in fact, recently he got married.\u00a0 He would, therefore, submit that it would be unjust at this stage to apply Section 6 of the POCSO Act and send the respondent to jail to undergo further sentence.<\/p>\n

Held:<\/u><\/strong> The court allowed the present appeal and set aside high court\u2019s judgment while restoring the judgment passed by Additional Sessions Judge, Special Judge POCSO Act, Jhansi. The court thereby, directed the respondent to undergo rigorous\u00a0\u00a0 imprisonment\u00a0\u00a0 for\u00a0\u00a0 ten\u00a0\u00a0 years\u00a0\u00a0 for\u00a0\u00a0 the\u00a0\u00a0 offence punishable under Section 6 of the POCSO Act and pay a fine of Rs.5,000\/\u00ad. The court further observed that, \u201cthe POCSO Act was enacted to provide more stringent punishments for the offences of child abuse of various kinds and that is why minimum punishments have been prescribed in Sections 4, 6, 8 and 10 of the POCSO Act for various categories of sexual assaults on children.\u00a0 Hence, Section 6, on its plain language, leaves no discretion to the Court and there is no option but to impose the minimum sentence as done by the Trial Court.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

State of U.P. (Appellant) Vs. Sonu Kushwaha (Respondent) CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 1633 OF 2023 (2JB, Abhay S. Oka and Rajesh Bindal JJ., delivered by Abhay S. Oka J.) Facts: The present appeal has been preferred by the state against the High court\u2019s judgment whereby it concluded that the act committed by the respondent was of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-judgement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=750"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":753,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions\/753"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}