What is the Romeo-Juliet clause and why teen relationships are forcing a legal rethink
- Team TOI Plus
- Updated: Jan 14, 2026, 22:13 IST IST
For years, courts across India have been quietly flagging a troubling pattern in cases under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act — a law enacted in 2012 to shield minors from sexual abuse, but increasingly being used to criminalise consensual teenage relationships or to settle personal scores. Friday, last week, the Supreme Court chose to confront this problem head-on.
A bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and N Kotiswar Singh took “repeated judicial notice” of how the law was being misapplied and asked the Centre to consider introducing a “Romeo-Juliet” clause to exempt “genuine adolescent relationships” from POCSO’s harshest provisions. The court ordered that its judgment be circulated to the Union law secretary to consider steps to “curb this menace” — including a legal carve-out for consensual close-in-age relationships and action against those who misuse the law to “settle scores”.
A bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and N Kotiswar Singh took “repeated judicial notice” of how the law was being misapplied and asked the Centre to consider introducing a “Romeo-Juliet” clause to exempt “genuine adolescent relationships” from POCSO’s harshest provisions. The court ordered that its judgment be circulated to the Union law secretary to consider steps to “curb this menace” — including a legal carve-out for consensual close-in-age relationships and action against those who misuse the law to “settle scores”.
