POCSO Act: School leaving certificate can’t be relied upon to determine victim’s age, says Supreme Court
Satya Prakash
New Delhi, July 19
School leaving/transfer certificate cannot be relied upon to determine age of a person under the Juvenile Justice Act to determine the age of a victim for applicability of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, the Supreme Court has ruled.
Discussing the requirements of Section 94 of the JJ Act, a Bench led by Justice S Ravindra Bhat said the court has to consider the date of birth certificate from the school, or the matriculation or equivalent certificate from the concerned examination Board, if available; and in the absence thereof; the birth certificate given by a corporation or a municipal authority or a panchayat.
It said only in the absence of birth certificate from the school, or the matriculation and the birth certificate given by a corporation or a municipal authority or a panchayat, age shall be determined by an ossification test or any other latest medical age determination test conducted on the orders of the Committee or the Board.
The top court set aside an order of the Madras High Court convicting a man of sexual assault on a minor girl and abetting child marriage. The high court was wrong in relying upon a school transfer certificate and rejecting a doctor’s opinion that the alleged minor was 19-year-old at the time of the incident in question, it held.
“In the present case, concededly, only a transfer certificate and not the date of birth certificate or matriculation or equivalent certificate was considered… the school transfer certificate showed the date of birth of the victim as 11.07.1997. Significantly, the transfer certificate was produced not by the prosecution but instead by the court summoned witness…The burden is always upon the prosecution to establish what it alleges; therefore, the prosecution could not have been fallen back upon a document which it had never relied upon,” the top court said.
Setting aside the HC verdict, the SC said, “The appellant shall be set at liberty forthwith unless required in connection with any other case.”
