New Delhi: Setting aside the Madras high court’s order that downloading and watching child pornography is not an offence, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that mere storage of such material is a crime under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO Act).
“The HC committed an error in its order and thus we set aside the HC order and we remit the matter back to the sessions court,” said Justice JB Pardiwala, according to Bar and Bench.
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 and Abusive Material”.
The court observed that the Central government can bring an ordinance 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 and 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 said mere downloading and watching child pornography was not an offence under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and Information Technology (IT) Act.
The high court had made the observation 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 and instead of punishing them, the society must be “mature enough” to educate them.
