Photo Courtesy: India Today Group
Shillong: The Meghalaya High Court scrapped a POCSO case against a 27-year-old man after he married his partner. The pair shares a four-year-old daughter. Both the accused and the survivor filed a joint petition to kill an FIR from 2021. The Ri-Bhoi Women Police Station originally filed the case while the survivor was a pregnant minor. She turned eighteen and the pair wed in March 2026 before a Marriage Registrar in Nongpoh.
A court report confirmed the couple lives together. The woman had to drop a Laboratory Technology diploma course due to the legal fight. She now wants to study law or learn tailoring. She told the court she had "no objection to the quashing of the proceeding" against her husband. The bench cited social realities in the state to justify the move. Judges ruled that "the ground realities in the State of Meghalaya cannot be ignored" regarding early marriages.
The court pointed out that "there cannot be any straitjacket formula" for these cases. Sending the father to jail would hurt the child more than the law. The proceedings before the Special Judge in Ri-Bhoi are now over.
Authorities must provide the woman and child with benefits from Mission Vatsalya, the Nirbhaya Fund, and the Meghalaya Victim Compensation Scheme. They will also access Ayushman Bharat-PMJAY and Mission Shakti. The District Legal Services Authority and the District Child Protection Officer in Ri-Bhoi have eight weeks to help the woman get back to school or start vocational training.
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