On January 9, the Supreme Court formally acknowledged an issue that legal scholars, child rights experts, and young adults in consensual relationships have long voiced: the menace of the POCSO Act being weaponised by families to punish young persons, but especially young men in romantic relationships with young women.

The intervention validates years of alarm over how a statute designed to shield against predatory violence has been subverted into enforcing parental authority and traditional social boundaries.

The systemic vulnerability lies within the Act’s inflexible architecture.

Scholars have argued that, by establishing a rigid age of consent at 18 years and applying strict liability (in which the minor person’s consent is rendered legally irrelevant), POCSO casts an indiscriminate net on those it deems to be offenders.

Together with its stringent provisions and mandatory minimum sentences (which are intended to deter heinous offenders), the Act is easily manipulated by disapproving families.

In cases of elopement crossing caste or religious lines, parents often file charges of kidnapping and sexual assault; this triggers the Act if the woman is under 18.

As a result, in the current framework, a consensual adolescent relationship is hard to distinguish from coercive abuse, allowing families to use the state’s punitive machinery against partners they consider unsuitable.

The Law Commission of India documented this gap in a 2023 report, in the course of advising against lowering the general age of consent from 18, citing dangers such as trafficking and child marriage.

It also highlighted that treating two teenagers being close together with the severity reserved for predatory abuse is developmentally counterproductive, and recommended introducing “guided judicial discretion” in sentencing in cases involving adolescents aged 16-18.

Likewise, the Court has ordered that its January 9 judgment be shared with the Law Secretary to endeavour to “curb this menace”.

However, the crisis is made worse by the absence of interventions that are not punitive.

When young adults find their personal autonomy at odds with their families’ expectations, they often are left isolated; the problem begins here.

There is a lack of confidential counselling services for adolescents navigating relationships and emerging sexuality.

Resources to mediate with families struggling with these intergenerational transitions are also virtually non-existent outside of traditional, often conservative, community structures.

Until the state invests in bolstering these social services, prioritising education and counselling over invoking a response led by the police, and tweaking the Act to admit this recourse, the legal system will leave young couples vulnerable to familial wrath and prosecutorial overreach.