16+ offenders to be charged as Adults in sexual assault cases, Panel suggests changes in POCSO act
Cases registered under POCSO Act rose from 32,608 in 2017 to 47,325 in 2019, which is an increase of nearly 45% in just a span of two years. (Image Source: Reuters)
Updated: Mar 12, 2021, 05:22 PM IST
To check increasing crimes against children, a top panel has recommended to the Union government that the age limit under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act be reduced from 18 to 16 years.
According to the data furnished by the committee, cases registered under POCSO rose from 32,608 in 2017 to 47,325 in 2019, which is an increase of nearly 45% in just a span of two years.
Almost 24 years after India got its first guidelines to prevent sexual harassment at the workplace and eight years after the government enacted a law for it, there are few publicly available data on how efficient these mechanisms are, an IndiaSpend review found. In fact, the government maintains no centralised data relating to cases of harassment of women at workplaces, the Parliament was told in July 2019. Also, 95 per cent of India s women workers are employed in the informal sector and find it difficult to access legal mechanisms to report sexual harassment at workplace, experts told IndiaSpend. On February 17, a Delhi court acquitted journalist Priya Ramani in a defamation lawsuit filed by former editor and sitting member of parliament M J Akbar for accusing him of sexual harassment in 1993.