Delhi High Court today asked the AAP government to get data on implementation of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act in other states in the context of pendency of such cases and the number of prosecutors dealing with them.
A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal issued the direction to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government while hearing a PIL which alleged that there was lack of sufficient number of independent public prosecutors in special courts handling POCSO cases.
"Delhi government to provide data regarding what is the practice followed in other states under POCSO Act," the bench said.
It also called for a report from designated special courts regarding pendency of cases under the Act, data of cases completed since 2012 and whether the public prosecutors attached to each of these courts were able to cope with the number of cases.
"Report of designated special court (Delhi) their functioning and pendency of cases and whether the public prosecutors attached to that court are able to cope up with the recording of children in 30 days and disposal of the cases within one year of taking cognisance of chargesheet as provided under the Act," the court said and listed the matter for further hearing on September one.
The direction came after petitioner advocate Gaurav Kumar Bansal contended that as per information gathered by him under the Right to Information Act, till June 2014, more than 2,000 cases of sexual offences against children were pending in the designated special POCSO courts here.
On the other hand, the Directorate of Prosecution of the Delhi government in an affidavit placed before the court had said the current number of prosecutors was sufficient.
In his plea, Bansal has contended that looking at the number of cases under the POCSO Act as well as other Acts in each of the special courts, completion of trial within the stipulated time was not possible if more independent special public prosecutors were not appointed.
Bansal has alleged in his petition that the government
has not appointed Special Public Prosecutors (SPPs) to handle the POCSO cases and instead, powers of SPPs have been conferred on Additional Public Prosecutors (APPs) to deal with the cases pending in courts set up under the POCSO Act.
He had contended that the government's decision to confer the powers of SPPs on APPs was contrary to the high court's orders to appoint special prosecutors for such cases alone.
On April 16, 2014, the Centre had told the high court that it had given a go-ahead to the city government to appoint SPPs in each special court set up to handle sexual offence cases involving minors.
The court had thereafter asked the city government to appoint SPPs within four weeks and disposed of the PIL.
It, however, had granted liberty to seek revival of the PIL if the Delhi government failed to implement the order.
