Written by Srishti Singh,
Gujarat National Law University, Silvassa,
June 2026
Introduction
The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO Act) faces a structural paradox in India’s criminal justice system. The act, with its noble intention of protecting children from sexual exploitation and abuse, has come to be used more and more to criminalise common adolescent activity. In many cases documented a law meant to protect the defenceless children has been used as a weapon, as families fight against inter-caste or inter-faith relationships, as individuals want an extra-legal advantage, and as communities claim social norms through the means of criminal law.
The POCSO Act has a strict liability paradigm. Its absolute strictness has led to growing concern among legal scholars, judges and civil society organisations that it is being applied to what is a fundamentally different social reality from the one it is meant to address such as, consensual age-proximate sexual relationships, without any discrimination.[1] This does not only fails to distinguish between the two types of sexual relationships, but also leads to the interpretation that the age of consent is no longer a legal threshold, but a personal, psychological one. The Supreme Court of India stepped in forcefully in January 2026 into this conflict. In State of Uttar Pradesh v. Anurudh & Anr. The order does not create a ‘Romeo-Juliet Clause’ but remains a strong institutional call for Parliament to step in to enact a statutory close-in-age exemption to protect ‘genuine adolescent relationships’ from prosecution under the POCSO Act.[2]
What is this clause?
A Romeo-Juliet clause or close-in-age exemption is a narrow statutory exception in the laws of sexual offences that exempts adolescents from criminal liability for consensual romantic or sexual relationships with a partner that is close in age. It comes from comparative criminal law in the United States, where a lot of state legislatures adopted such measures in the second half of the twentieth century, as a way to avoid the unfairness of prosecuting teenage partners for statutory rape.[3] Such a provision does not affect safeguards against sexual exploitation and abuse, as explained by Advocates Rajesh G. Inamdar and Arpita Arun Chipkar in their academic commentary on the issue. Instead, it makes a principled distinction between sexual predation and age-proximate adolescent intimacy, while avoiding the criminalization of what is merely a normal developmental phase.[4]
In the United Kingdom, the age of consent is 16, and there are some proportionate safeguards within the sexual offences’ legislation. The international models are reflective of legislative recognition of adolescent relationships as a normal aspect of development and that criminal law is an inappropriate and disproportional way to regulate consensual intimate relationships between teenagers.[5]
The Supreme Court’s decision on Age Determination
The Supreme Court has allowed the appeal and set aside the directions of the Allahabad High Court in full. In its bail jurisdiction, the High Court was going against the clear intent of Parliament, thus acting coram non judice, the bench held. The Court was very clear that the finding of the victim’s age is a matter for the trial stage, subject to the presumptive evidentiary scheme in Section 94 of the JJ Act, and that bail courts cannot consider or direct for challenges to documentary age evidence.[6]
The Romeo – Juliet Observation and its Constitutional Significance
The court did not just make observations of a procedural nature, however, but also made observations of a constitutional nature of a far-reaching nature. The Court noted that the repeated and systematic misuse of the POCSO Act in relation to consensual adolescent relationships constitutes a ‘grim societal chasm’ between children who are silenced and fearful, and those who have the social and monetary capital to misuse the law and take revenge.[7] The Court also touched on the specific duty of the Bar of not taking sides in any case and of exercising caution in the face of allegations, and of avoiding becoming a party to a lawsuit where ulterior motives are being used as a pretext for child protection. The gap of injustice widens even more, said the bench, if the Bar fails to show this kind of ethical care.
The systemic misuse of the POCSO Act: a structural issue
The Anurudh judgment was not a solitary one. It came at a time when there has been a long history of judicial commentaries on the manner in which the POCSO Act is being misused for purposes quite opposite to the ones intended by the law. This concern is supported by and is given urgency by the empirical evidence. A large-scale study of 7,064 POCSO cases made between 2016 and 2020 was conducted by Enfold Proactiv. It discovered 24.3% of circumstances were romantic relationship circumstances, and crucially, 80.2% of complaints in those circumstances had been made by parents as opposed to the complainant herself.[8] Legal commentators have estimated that of the total of POCSO cases, around 40–60% are usually marriage or romantic relationship circumstances in which a girl’s family has accused the male partner of a criminal offence.
According to data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 7,305 cases were registered under the POCSO Act in 2023, comprising 4,321 sexual assaults (penetrative sexual assaults/rapes), 2,619 sexual assaults, and 264 sexual harassment cases. In these cases, alone, over 2,400 youth under the age of 18 were arrested themselves- a testament to the statute’s built-in effect of working against its own intended target. Whereas, in these cases alone, more than 2,400 children under 18 were arrested themselves, reflecting how the statute paradoxically operates against its intended target. Judges of various courts in India have already been dealing with this issue on a case-by-case basis.[9]
Legislative history of reform efforts in India.
The issue of the age of consent and its relationship to the rights of adolescents is not an unfamiliar one in the Indian legal discourse. The Nirbhaya Committee (Justice Verma Committee) had suggested in 2013 to reduce the age of consent from 18 to 16 years. This recommendation was finally overruled by Parliament, which continued to have the absolute bar in place at the age of eighteen.[10]
Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution of India are referred to as constitutional arguments.The Indian Constitution provides strong constitutional support for the case of Romeo-Juliet clause.Three of the provisions in the constitution are of especial interest.Article 14 provides protection against arbitrary classification and guarantees the right to equality.
The present POCSO law views the situation of a predator adult with a child and a 17-year-old boy or girl in a consensual relationship with a peer of similar age in the same way. The mixing of two entirely different sets of facts is an arbitrary and irrational classification, which does not satisfy the ‘reasonable nexus’ to the legislature’s goal of child protection.[11]
Article 21 guarantees right to life, personal liberty, right to privacy and dignity. The right to privacy includes the right to control one’s intimate personal decisions, as stipulated in Puttaswamy(2017). The blanket criminalisation of consensual adolescent relationships, regardless of capacity, context or intent, is an unwarranted and disproportionate assault by the State on the space of personal liberty, safeguarded by Article 21.[12]
Research into adolescent cognition indicates that adolescents 16 to 18 years of age have a significant ability to make informed decisions when it comes to their personal lives, including sexual relationships. The ‘evolving capacity’ principle is a cornerstone of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) to which India is an International party that states that as adolescents grow older, their autonomy rights grow too.[13]
Proposed Safeguards
These are genuine issues which can be controlled with proper statutory protection. A well-crafted Romeo–Juliet clause for India could provide for such things as:
- a clearly defined maximum age difference (e.g., 2-3 years)
- a minimum age limit below which there shall be no exception
- a requirement for actual consent (without any conditions of inducement, coercion, or influence)
- clear provisions for judicial discretion in cases where there is a fact question
- clear clauses excluding relationships involving any position of trust, authority, or dependency.
Conclusion
It will be necessary to create a new path to legislative reform and a future trajectory for that in order to move forward. As stated in Anurudh (2026), the Supreme Court’s guidance is not binding on Parliament, but it signals Parliament its constitutional role. The Court’s practice of sending its judgment directly to the Law Secretary is a formal procedure for judicial recommendation and what the Court says in its judgment puts pressure for change on the political and legal arena. From a legislative standpoint, the way forward is a coordinated action of multiple stakeholders. Parliament should look into the possibility of amending the POCSO Act, which does not have any provisions for a close-in-age exception, and include a provision, which will be in tandem with increased punishment for people who exploit child protection laws to serve their egos.
References
[1] Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, No. 32, Acts of Parliament (India). Section 2(d) defines a ‘child’ as any person below eighteen years of age.
[2] The State of Uttar Pradesh v. Anurudh & Anr., 2026 INSC 47, Criminal Appeal @ SLP (Crl) 10656 of 2025 (Supreme Court of India, January 9, 2026).
[3] Subhash Ahlawat, ‘Romeo-Juliet Clause Under the POCSO Act’, available at https://subhashahlawat.com (last visited May 2026). The term is derived from American comparative criminal jurisprudence.
[4] Rajesh G. Inamdar & Arpita Arun Chipkar, ‘Romeo-Juliet Clause and POCSO’, Live Law (January 21, 2026), available at https://www.livelaw.in/articles/pocso-act-romeo-juliet-clause-519855 (last visited May 2026).
[5] Sanskriti IAS, ‘Supreme Court Emphasizes Romeo-Juliet Exception in the POCSO Act’, available at https://www.sanskritiias.com (last visited May 2026).
[6] Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, No. 2, Acts of Parliament (India), s. 94.
[7] Anurudh, supra note 2 (per Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice N. Kotiswar Singh).
[8] Enfold Proactiv, Analysis of 7,064 POCSO Judgments (2016-2020), as cited in Legacy IAS, ‘Under POCSO Consent on Trial’, available at https://www.legacyias.com (last visited May 2026).
[9] Rajesh G. Inamdar & Arpita Arun Chipkar, supra note 4.
[10] Justice J.S. Verma, Justice Leila Seth & Gopal Subramanium, Report of the Committee on Amendments to Criminal Law (January 23, 2013) (recommending age of consent be lowered to 16).
[11] The Legal Quorum, ‘The Romeo-Juliet Clause in POCSO Act’, available at https://thelegalquorum.com (last visited May 2026).
[12] Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India, supra note 17; see also Advocate Aarun Chanda, ‘Romeo-Juliet Clause and Consensual Adolescent Relationships’, The Divorce Law Firm (February 11, 2026), available at https://www.thedivorcelawfirm.in (last visited May 2026).
[13] UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, G.A. Res. 44/25 (November 20, 1989), Art. 5 (evolving capacities of the child).
