Karnataka High Court quashes POCSO case against child’s father, citing abuse of law by mother due to marital discord
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A view of the High Court of Karnataka. | Photo Credit: File Photo
Observing that children’s innocence must not become parents’ battleground for vengeance, the High Court of Karnataka has quashed a criminal case registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act against a man and his family members by his wife, alleging sexual assault on their three-year-old daughter.
“A child cannot be reduced to a weapon in the armoury of an estranged spouse. The innocence of childhood cannot be made the currency with which matrimonial scores are settled. Equally, the protection of a child cannot be sacrificed at the altar of a parent’s claim of false implication,” the court observed.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the order while allowing a petition filed by a 35-year-old man, his father, mother and brother, challenging the criminal case registered against them in May this year by his 33-year-old wife.
The court noted that the case stemmed from a matrimonial dispute dating back to 2024, with the father having obtained visitation rights through orders of the Family Court and later the High Court. The complaint was filed by the mother on May 18, alleging that the minor child had redness and excoriation in her private parts after returning from visitation on May 16 and 17.
However, the court, based on affidavits from two doctors at a private hospital in Bengaluru who had examined the child, found that the doctors had stated that the findings recorded in their medical notes were “non-specific clinical findings” and that the tests conducted were only to rule out a urinary tract infection. The mother had taken the child to these doctors for a medical examination.
Noticing that neither doctor conducted a medico-legal examination of the child, the court said that the entire accusation rested on an inference drawn by the mother from the medical notes, though the doctors themselves had not linked it to sexual assault.
“The medical opinion is thus made to speak what it does not say,” by the mother, the court stated while pointing out that there was nothing that could be called as ingredients of offences under the POCSO Act in the complaint.
Stating that the courts were increasingly confronted with matrimonial disputes in which allegations of grave criminal misconduct were intertwined with proceedings concerning custody, visitation and parental access, Justice Nagaprasanna said that in such cases, the child sometimes stands at the intersection of two competing narratives, each parent claiming to act in the child’s paramount interest.
“The danger is not merely that a parent may be falsely accused; it is equally that a genuine grievance of a child may be obscured by the surrounding matrimonial hostility. Both possibilities demand vigilance. Neither can be presumed merely from the existence of matrimonial discord,” the court said.
Meanwhile, the court granted liberty to the child’s father and his family members to initiate proceedings against the child’s mother, if they were so advised, under Section 22 of the POCSO Act, which safeguards persons against false complaints or information.
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