The Karnataka High Court has clarified that the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, is gender-neutral and extends equal protection to both boys and girls. It also makes clear that offenders, whether male or female, can be held guilty under the law.

The judgment came while hearing a case involving a 48-year-old art teacher accused of sexually assaulting her 13-year-old neighbour multiple times. The accused had appealed for the FIR to be quashed, but Justice M. Nagaprasanna dismissed the plea. The court stressed that the Act does not restrict liability to men alone. “The gender of the perpetrator is immaterial. What matters is the act itself and the involvement of the child,” the judge said.

The bench further pointed out that amendments made to the POCSO Act in 2019 had already confirmed its gender-neutral scope. The court noted that the word “person” in Section 3 cannot be narrowly interpreted as only referring to a man. It emphasised that sexual assault under the Act remains an offence regardless of who commits it, as long as the victim is a child.

To support its reasoning, the court referred to a government study conducted in 2007, which revealed that 54.4% of child sexual abuse survivors were boys and 45.6% were girls. Justice Nagaprasanna observed that this highlights an important fact,  sexual violence affects children of both genders, and boys are equally vulnerable.

The accused woman’s lawyer had argued that, similar to the rape provisions in the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the POCSO Act should only consider men as perpetrators. He also claimed that the Act occasionally uses the pronoun “he” to describe an offender, which should exclude women from being charged.

Rejecting these claims, the High Court made it clear that the purpose of POCSO is to protect every child and to punish any person who commits such crimes, regardless of gender.

This landmark ruling reinforces the gender-neutral intent of the POCSO Act and sends a strong message that sexual crimes against children cannot be excused based on the identity of the offender.