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Kolkata: Calcutta High Court urged teenagers to control their sexual urges and respect the dignity and bodily autonomy of the other gender.
The court was hearing a plea by a teenager against conviction in a rape case when it listed out some guidelines to teenage boys and girls.
A session court last year sentenced the boy to 20 years in prison for having sex with his underage romantic partner.
The girl told court during the hearing that she was in love on her own will and later married him, adding that the age of consent for sex in India is 18 and their relationship was an offense, according to NDTV.
The consent for sexual intercourse given by a person aged below 18 is not valid and the act is an offense under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO).
The two-judge bench of Justices Chitta Ranjan Dash and Partha Sarathi Sen called for conducting sex education in schools in view of the legal issues ‘arising from sexual relation at a young age’, while setting aside the sessions court verdict.
Describing the sex among adolescents as ‘normal’, the court asked teenage girls to control their sexual urges, advising not to ‘give in to two minutes of pleasure’.
‘Control sexual urge/urges as in the eyes of the society she is the looser when she gives in to enjoy the sexual pleasure of hardly two minutes,’ the bench reportedly said in judgement.
The bench reminded young girls of their duty to protect ‘right to the integrity of her body, dignity and self-worth’.
The court asked boys to train their minds to respect girls’ dignity.
‘It is the duty of a male adolescent to respect the aforesaid duties of a young girl or woman, and he should train his mind to respect a woman, her self-worth, her dignity and privacy, and the right to autonomy of her body,’ the court was quoted as saying.