Bhopal/Gwalior, July 1 -- The Madhya Pradesh high court has urged the central government to consider reducing the age of consent for women from 18 to 16 to avoid the "injustice" of adolescent boys being treated as criminals, an observation it made while scrapping an FIR against a 20-year-old man accused of rape.
The increase in women's age of consent from 16 to 18 has "disturbed the fabric of society", said a single-judge bench of justice Deepak Kumar Agarwal.
"Nowadays, every male or female near the age of 14 years, due to social media awareness and easily accessible internet connectivity, is getting puberty at an early age," the judge said. "Boys and girls are getting attracted to each other owing to this early puberty," he said, ultima...