Is sex between minors OK?

The government is considering the possibility of exempting consensual sex between minors from the purview of criminal offences, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Apr 27, 2007, 03:38:18 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government is considering the possibility of exempting consensual sex between minors from the purview of criminal offences. This has been prompted by a government study which found that a number of those below 18 years experiment with sex or engage in sexual activity with people in the same age group.

Abuse or not

•A study says sex or sexual acts between ‘young children’ may not always be abuse

•An official says a minor cannot be prosecuted if there is neither a victim nor a perpetrator

•Experts say it will be difficult to distinguish between abuse and consensual act. A minor could abuse a younger child in the name of exploring sexuality

The Offences Against Child Bill drafted by the Women and Child Development (WCD) Ministry enumerates sex with a child — defined as anyone below the age of 18 — as a criminal offence. The report, ‘Study on Child Abuse in India’, says sex or sexual acts between young children may not always amount to abuse.

The study says sexual abuse is highest among children in the age group of 15-18. Up to 38.5 per cent children said friends or classmates had fondled them or touched their body parts while 24 per cent said the same had been done to them by relatives.

“Many children were also of the opinion that they may not have been in an abusive situation, giving credence (to the assumption) that it may have been consensual sexual activity,” the report says.

An official told HT that the WCD Ministry wanted to revisit the bill in the light of the study’s findings.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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