Civilisational advancements of societies get reflected in the way they treat their vulnerable. Each society may have its own processes and tools to identify those who need special protection, introduce these, and then institutionalise them. The Indian Constitution is one of the best manifestations how a society can do it.
However, certain grave lapses could occur in the process whereby the weak remain meek and societies fail to identify them for several reasons. In such cases, victims would suffer for wrongs they have not committed.
Children are one such section, long denied their rightful protection from wrongdoings of the grown-up. The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act, 2012, and the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015 partially filled these lacunae — the first is about how to treat children who land in the quicksand of crime and the second about how to protect children from sexual exploitation and punish offenders.
The Supreme Court verdict of Monday making downloading and watching child sexual exploitative and abuse material (CSEAM) an offence under the Pocso Act and the Information Technology Act, 2000, takes the whole process one more step ahead and must be seen as a bold attempt to make the lives children safer. The court overruled an observation of the Madras high court that mere downloading and watching such material without disseminating it did not constitute an offence under the Pocso Act.
It observed that children are entitled to grow up in an environment that respects their dignity and protects them from harm and child sexual exploitative material achieves quite the opposite. “It reduces them to objects of sexual gratification, stripping them of their humanity and violating their fundamental rights,” the court observed. CSEAM violates children’s right in the most “egregious manner possible” and the existence and circulation of CSEAM were “affronts to the dignity of all children, not just the victims depicted in the material,” the court observed. It was only reflecting truth when it said that the impact of CSEAM on its victims was devastating and far-reaching, affecting their mental, emotional and social well-being, the only remedy for which is the strict enforcement of the law.
That the court has delved deep into subject of abuse of sexual abuse of children is evident from the fact that it has come out with an important marker for society. It said it is no more normal to call such material “child pornography”, and directed courts in the country to use the term, CSEAM, instead, and it has also requested Parliament to consider bringing about an amendment to the Pocso Act to give legal backing to the change.
The import of the directive lies in the fact that the term “child pornography” in no way communicates the grossness of the egregious crime or its impact on the victim; it would be seen as the children’s version of an adult act, which it is not. Parliament must immediately consider this suggestion as society must be made aware of the enormity of the act so that every stakeholder joins forces to end it.
The Supreme Court’s intervention for the sake of our children must be taken to its logical end so that we become a better nation.
