KATHMANDU, OCTOBER 11
Legal experts have highlighted the need to change sexual offence related acts arguing that the current application of age of consent laws had unnecessarily victimised minors.
Presenting a paper at a programme organised by Public Defender Society of Nepal on 'Gender-based violence and defence challenges,' Executive Director of PDS-Nepal Ajay Shankar Jha said that many teenage boys who had consensual relations with teenage girls were languishing in jails for years as sexual relations with people below the age of 18 constituted rape.
"The current laws have fixed the age of consent at 18 and the principle behind this provision is that people below 18 years of age are not capable of taking sound and independent decisions. If that is the case, then any boy who is below 18 years of age, should not be punished with the rape law made for those perpetrators who are above 18 years of age," Jha said. The reason for showing such leniency is that like the girls below the age of 18, boys below the age of 18 are also not mentally mature and thus unable to take sound decisions. They think that they have the consent of other partners and there is no criminal motive in such cases, Jha argued.
He said the lives of many teenage boys who were convicted of rape were being ruined as a result of their long incarceration as they were unable to pursue higher studies and apply for formal sector jobs. Jha said that many offences that had to be adjudicated by the court were being adjudicated by quasi-judicial bodies as laws were changed a few years ago to empower chief district officers who work mainly at the behest of the government.
He said deeming 18 years the age of consent was flawed as it was natural for young boys and girls to engage in physical relationship before 18 years of age.
US-based researcher Bishnu Ghimire said that discrimination on grounds of ethnicity and race was prevalent in all parts of the country and attempts should be made to make the public aware so that the root cause of discrimination could be addressed.
Taking part in the interaction, Advocate Naresh Bhattarai said if the current law that fixed the age of consent at 18 years of age was not changed, the day would not be far when young boys would have to be chained at home. He said children of those parents who were married at the age of 17-18 in the past were intellectually very sound and hence the logic that age of consent should be 18 was wrong. He also said a recent research revealed that out of 1,462 juvenile delinquents lodged at different child correction homes, 58 per cent were facing child marriage and rape cases.
Advocate Ram Maya Lamichhane said that in order to prevent victims from becoming hostile in the court, police personnel deployed in the investigation should ensure that the first statement of victims should be recorded on CCTV and should be produced before the court when they change their statements in the court. She said extending the statute of limitation for non-minor victims was not justified.
Some lawyers said that due to the age of consent and statute of limitation provisions, many innocent people could be framed in rape cases.
A version of this article appears in the print on October 12, 2022 of The Himalayan Times.
