‘Physical relations’ cannot automatically mean sexual assault: Delhi High Court

The Delhi High Court has acquitted a man in a POCSO case, saying the use of phrase ‘physical relations’ by the minor survivor cannot automatically mean sexual assault. A bench of Justices Prathiba M Singh and Amit Sharma allowed the appeal by the accused, who was awarded imprisonment for the remainder of his life, and observed that it was unclear how the trial court concluded that there was any sexual assault when the survivor had voluntarily gone with the accused. The court asserted that the leap from physical relations or ‘samband’ to sexual assault and then to penetrative sexual assault must be established by evidence and cannot be deduced as an inference. “The mere fact that the survivor is below 18 years cannot lead to a conclusion that there was penetrative sexual assault. The survivor, in fact, used the phrase ‘physical relations’, but there is no clarity as to what she meant by using the said phrase,” the court said in the judgement passed on December 23. “Even the use of the words ‘samband banaya’ is not sufficient to establish an offence under Section 3 of the POCSO Act or under Section 376 IPC,” it held.