The Court was hearing a suo motu case initiated in the wake of a Calcutta High Court ruling that had called for adolescent girls to “control” their sexual urges instead of “giving in to two minutes of pleasure”.
The High Court had voiced concerns over the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO Act) conflating consensual acts among adolescents with sexual abuse and called for decriminalizing consensual sexual acts involving adolescents above 16 years.
The High Court also called for comprehensive rights-based sexual education for adolescents to avoid legal complications arising from sexual relations at a young age.
However, the High Court ruling sparked controversy since it also proposed a ‘duty/obligation based approach’ for teenagers and suggested that adolescent females and males have different duties.
Among other ‘duties’, adolescent females were advised to “Control sexual urge/urges as in the eyes of society she is the looser when she gives in to enjoy the sexual pleasure of hardly two minutes.”
Adolescent boys, meanwhile, were asked to respect the duties of young girls or women and to train their minds to respect women, their self-worth, dignity, privacy and right to autonomy.
Source: Barandbench
