Skin to Skin contact necessary for crime under POSCO Act
The most important ingredient for constituting an offence of sexual assault under Section 7 of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act is the “sexual intent”, and not the “skin-to-skin” contact with the child”, the Supreme Court said on Thursday while quashing two judgments of the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court.
The two HC judgments had set off a furore for concluding that it will not amount to an offence of sexual assault under Section 7 of POCSO if there is “no direct physical contact, i.e. skin to skin” between the accused and the victim.
On Thursday, the SC bench of Justices U U Lalit, S Ravindra Bhat and Bela M Trivedi went into the dictionary meaning of the words “touch” and “physical contact” and said that “touch” has been used specifically with regard to sexual parts of the body, whereas the word “physical contact” has been used for any other act. Therefore, the court ruled, the “act of touching the sexual part of body or any other act involving physical contact, if done with ‘sexual intent’, would amount to ‘sexual assault’ within the meaning of Section 7 of POCSO Act”.