Between love and law

Legal scholars say India keeping the age of consent at 18 shows moral paternalism rather than evidence-based policy as the Supreme Court takes up the issue

- KANU SARDA

The air inside Delhi’s Karkardooma court felt thick as 17-year-old Aarav Sharma (name changed) stood in the witness box, shoulders stiff, hands trembling behind his back. His eyes searched the room anxiously until they found the one face that had stood by him through it all— Kritika (name changed), 16, sitting resolutely in the front row.

For six months, Aarav, a class 12 student and aspiring computer engineer, had been confined to an observation home. His father, a Delhi Transport Corporation bus driver, and his mother, a homemaker, had been running from pillar to post. His crime was a relationship that began like countless adolescent romances across India—quietly, awkwardly and inevitably.

But in India, under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, consent is irrelevant if one or both partners are under 18. Love, as many adolescents may define it, becomes a legal offence.

Aarav’s world collapsed in August 2023 when Kritika’s parents, after discovering their WhatsApp chats, filed a complaint. The police arrived at his Mandawali home at 5am on August 17, waking the family to a nightmare they had never imagined.

Their romance began in late 2021 in a cramped tuition centre in East Delhi. Both lived within walking distance, three streets apart in Mandawali, a neighbourhood stitched together by narrow lanes, small flats and big ambitions. "They were two children trying to understand affection, not exploit it," says Aarav's lawyer Vikram Bhatia. "What they shared was mutual, voluntary and gentle, yet the law treated him like a predator."