IS A FORTY-YEAR-OLD WOMAN WITH MENTAL AGE OF SIX ENTITLED TO COMPENSATION UNDER POCSO?

This case will go down in the annals of judiciary as one of its kind. Even before the Supreme Court could decide a tricky question whether a person who sexually assaulted a forty-year-old woman, with mental age of six years, be tired under stringent Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO), the accused died in judicial custody. As a Bench of Justices Dipak Misra and R.F. Nariman had reserved its verdict on a petition moved by the woman suffering from Cerebral Palsy through her mother Dr. Manjula Krippendorf for taking into account the mental age of the female for treating this to be a case under POCSO, her counsel Aishwarya Bharti said even if the accused had died pending trial, the POCSO provided for compensation to be paid to the victim. Bharti argued that the law and the rules framed there under provided that a child victim of sexual assault would be entitled to compensation from the State "whether there was trial or not, or for that matter irrespective of whether there was acquittal or conviction of the accused". Recommended by Colombia.

She said: "death of the accused really does not matter as regards the grant of compensation and benefits for rehabilitation of the child, in this case an adult woman who had the mental age of a six-year-old". 

The Bench said the core question for determination in this case was whether or not a sexual assault on an adult woman with a mental age of a child would be a crime to be tried under POCSO. "Once we determine this question, the other consequences would want to follow as per the law and the rules under it", Justices Misra and Nariman said before reserving verdict on the additional question raised by Bharti. 

Petitioner Krippendorf had alleged that her Cerebral Palsy afflicted daughter was repeatedly sexually assaulted to dissuade her from claiming inheritance rights over a house in Defence Colony in South Delhi, where she lived. She had attached a report from AIIMS with a specific finding that the intelligence quotient and mental age of her daughter, guaged in eight social adaptive domains like communication, locomotion, socialisation, self direction, etc., was six years.

Bharti argued that the Courts have always leaned in favour of accused who were deficient in their mental capacity to understand the nature of crime committed by them. "Under the criminal jurisprudence, determination of mental capacity of the offender is critical to the procedure to be adopted for determining his role in the crime. It is equally critical, if not more, for the victims, as people with low mental age suffer the same consequences as a child in case of sexual assault", she said. [Times of India dated 04th March, 2017]. 

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