Hyderabad: A POCSO court awarded a three-year jail term to a school teacher for stalking a minor girl in Hyderabad.
The teacher, Yacharam Ramesh, aged 25 years, was harassing the 17-year-old girl. He has even gone to the girl’s house to threaten her that he would die if she did not marry him.
Despite receiving a warning from the girl, Ramesh continued to harass her on calls and messages.
As per Meerpet Police, after getting rejected by the girl, the man sent a call recording to the victim’s family to harass her.
When the matter reached the police, cops registered a case and arrested the man.
After the trial, the POCSO court judge sent the teacher to jail and imposed a fine of Rs. 20 thousand.
What is POCSO Act?
The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act was enacted in 2012 to protect the children aged below 18 years from various sexual offences.
Under the act, any person aged below 18 years irrespective of the gender is a child. The act broadly classified sexual offenses against the child into five.
- Penetrative sexual assault
- Aggregative penetrative sexual assault
- Sexual assault
- Aggregative sexual assault
- Sexual harassment
The minimum punishment for penetrative sexual assault under POCSO Act is 10 years in jail if the offense is committed against a girl aged between 16-18 years.
In the case of aggregative penetrative sexual assault, the minimum punishment under the act is 20 years.
As per the act, the person who commits sexual assault on a child is punished with imprisonment of not less than three years whereas, the minimum punishment for the accused of aggregative sexual assault is five years.
In case of sexual harassment, the accused is sent to jail for a term that may extend to three years.
The sections of the act also apply to the accused who uses a child for pornographic purpose.
