The Madhya Pradesh High Court recently urged the Centre to reduce the age of consent for sex from the current 18 years to 16 years.

“Generally, girls and boys of adolescents age develop friendship and thereafter, due to attraction make physical relationship. But, due to this rider boy is treated like a criminal in the society. Today, most of criminal cases in which prosecutrix is under 18 years of age, due to aforesaid anomaly, injustice is going on with adolescent boys. Thus, I request Government of India to think over the matter for reducing the age of prosecutrix from 18 to 16 years as earlier before amendments so that injustice should be redressed,” the court said.

“Now a days, every male or female near the age of 14 years due to social media awareness and easily accessible internet connectivity is getting puberty in early age. Owing to this, female and male child are getting attraction and these attractions are resulting into physical relationship with consent. In these cases, male persons are not at all criminal,” it added.