Karnataka High Court quashes POCSO case against child’s father citing abuse of law by mother over marital discord

View of Karnataka High Court. | Photo credit: File Photo

Observing that childhood innocence must not become a battleground for revenge by parents, the Karnataka High Court quashed a case registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses Act (POCSO) against a man and his family members by his wife, who alleged that their three-year-old daughter was sexually assaulted.

“A child cannot be reduced to a weapon in the armory of an estranged spouse. A child’s innocence cannot be the currency by which marital accounts are settled. Likewise, the child’s protection cannot be sacrificed on the altar of a parent’s claim of false implication,” the court said.

Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the order while allowing a petition by a 35-year-old man, his father, mother and brother challenging a criminal case registered against them by his 33-year-old wife in May this year.

Marital dispute

The court noted that the case stemmed from a 2024 matrimonial dispute in which the father had obtained access to the child through orders from the family court and later the high court. The mother filed a complaint on May 18, stating that the minor child had redness and abrasions in his private parts after returning from a visit on May 16 and 17.

However, the court heard from the affidavits of two doctors from a private hospital in Bengaluru who examined the child that the doctors said the findings recorded in their medical records were “non-specific clinical findings” and that the tests conducted were only to rule out a urinary tract infection. The mother took the child to these doctors for a medical examination.

Noting that neither doctor had conducted a medico-legal examination of the child, the court said the entire charge rested on the mother’s conclusion from the medical records, although the doctors themselves did not link it to sexual assault.

“So the medical report is made to speak of what it does not say,” the mother said, the court said, pointing out that there was nothing in the complaint that could be termed as offenses under the POCSO Act.

Dragging children

Justice Nagaprasanna said the courts are increasingly confronted with matrimonial disputes in which allegations of serious crimes are intertwined with custody, visitation and parental contact proceedings, and said that in such cases the child sometimes stands at the crossroads of two competing narratives, with each parent claiming to be acting in the child’s best interests.

“The danger lies not only in the fact that the parent may be falsely accused, but also in the fact that the child’s real grievance may be covered up by the surrounding marital hostility. Both possibilities require vigilance. Neither can be assumed merely from the existence of marital discord,” the court said.

Meanwhile, the court allowed the child’s father and his family members to initiate proceedings against the child’s mother, if advised, under Section 22 of the POCSO Act, which protects persons against false complaints or information.

Published – 06 Nov 2026 20:28 IST