State of Madhya Pradesh v. Anoop Singh (2015)

Age is not only the accused's problem. Under POCSO everything turns on whether the victim was under eighteen: the definition of a child in s. 2(d), the application of the Act at all, and the presumptions in ss. 29 and 30 which operate once a prosecution under the Act is on foot. In a rape or sexual assault case with no birth certificate, the question is how the victim's age is to be determined — and the machinery written for age determination is machinery in the juvenile justice legislation, which is about children in conflict with law.

Anoop Singh bridges that gap, and it is the case to cite whenever the victim's age is in issue.

The case concerned the determination of the age of the victim of a rape, and whether the age-determination procedure in the juvenile justice rules applied to her.

The Court held that the age-determination rule made under the juvenile justice legislation is also applicable in determining the age of a rape victim.

The rule prescribes a method of proving age, not a status. Its hierarchy — school and examination records first, civil registration next, medical assessment last — answers an evidentiary question that arises identically whoever the person is, and there is no reason in the nature of the inquiry why it should produce one answer for a person claiming to be a child in conflict with law and another for a child who is said to have been assaulted. Applying the same method also avoids the worse alternative, in which the age of a victim is settled by medical estimate as a matter of course.

Use it in any question on POCSO where the age of the child is in dispute, and in any question on age determination generally, to show that the method is common to both sides of Module IV.

Carry the method across with it: the date of birth certificate from the school or the matriculation or equivalent certificate; failing that, the birth certificate from a corporation, municipal authority or panchayat; and only failing both, an ossification test or other latest medical test, to be completed within fifteen days of the order, under s. 94(2) of the Act of 2015. Add Kulai Ibrahim v. State for the rule that the medical route opens only where those documents are unavailable, fabricated or manipulated.

It does not decide anything about the POCSO presumptions, about consent, or about the sentence, and it does not make the juvenile justice legislation applicable to the victim for any other purpose.

The decision was given on the rules under the Act of 2000; the current provision is s. 94 of the Act of 2015.