Setting aside the Madras High Court’s order that downloading & watching child pornography is not an offence, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that mere storage of such material is an offence under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO Act).
“The HC committed an error in its order & thus we set aside the HC order & we remit the matter back to the Sessions Court,” said Justice JB Pardiwala.
In its verdict, the Supreme Court suggested that Parliament must bring a law amending the POCSO Act to replace the term “child pornography” with “Child Sexual Exploitative & Abusive Material”.
The court observed that the Central government can bring an ordinance to this effect until the legislation is passed.
The court also ordered all courts not to use the term “child pornography”.
“We have suggested to the parliament to bring an amendment to POCSO…so that the definition of child pornography can be referred to as child sexually abusive & exploitative material. We have suggested an ordinance can be brought in. We have asked all courts not to refer to child pornography in any orders,” he said.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear the plea challenging the high court ruling that had said mere downloading & watching child pornography was not an offence under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act & Information Technology (IT) Act.
The high court had observed while quashing criminal proceedings against a 28-year-old man charged with downloading pornographic content involving children on his mobile phone.
The high court had also said that children these days are grappling with the serious issue of watching pornography & instead of punishing them, the society must be “mature enough” to educate them.