Supreme Court overturns HC ruling which advised girls to control sexual urges

The Supreme Court on Tuesday set aside the Calcutta High Court order asking adolescent girls to control their sexual urges.

A Bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan said it has also explained in detail on how courts should write judgments.

The verdict came in a suo motu case initiated in the wake of a Calcutta High Court ruling that had called for adolescent girls to "control" their sexual urges instead of "giving in to two minutes of pleasure".

It had sparked controversy since it proposed a 'duty/obligation based approach' for teenagers, and suggested that adolescent females and males have different duties.

The Supreme Court had taken suo motu coginzance of the same in December 2023, opining that the comments made by the High Court were sweeping, objectionable, irrelevant, preachy and unwarranted.

The top court had also remarked that the High Court ruling sent wrong signals.

In the case before High Court, the  division bench of Justices Chitta Ranjan Dash and Partha Sarathi Sen had acquitted a youth, who was convicted for raping a minor girl, with whom he had a 'romantic affair'.

Today, the top court restored the conviction and said a committee of experts will take a call on his sentence.

Senior Advocates Madhavi Divan and Liz Mathew were amici curiae in the matter.

Senior Advocate Huzefa Ahmadi and advocate Astha Sharma appeared for State of West Bengal, which also had filed an appeal against the High Court verdict.