Just Rights for Children Alliance v. S. Harish: viewing and storing CSEAM is an offence

The facts in brief

The sole accused, S. Harish, was found to have downloaded and stored on his mobile phone material depicting children in sexually explicit conduct. He was booked under Section 15(1) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 and Section 67B of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

The Madras High Court quashed the proceedings. Its reasoning was that mere private storage or watching, without any sharing or transmission, did not amount to an offence. That conclusion sat against a conflicting line of authority in other High Courts and threatened to leave the most common form of online child-abuse offending — private possession and consumption — outside the criminal law altogether.

Two child-rights bodies — Just Rights for Children Alliance and the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights — appealed. A Bench of Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice J.B. Pardiwala, with the judgment authored by Pardiwala, J., treated the appeal as an occasion to settle the conflict and comprehensively map the statutory scheme. It reversed the High Court and restored the prosecution.

Three inchoate offences under Section 15

The analytical core of the judgment is its reading of Section 15 of the POCSO Act, which the Court held creates not one offence but three distinct inchoate offences, each distinguished by the mental state accompanying storage or possession.

Section 15(1) penalises storage or possession of child pornographic material with a failure to delete, destroy or report it — conduct from which an intention to share or transmit may be inferred. Section 15(2) penalises storage or possession for the purpose of transmitting, propagating, displaying or distributing. Section 15(3) penalises storage or possession for a commercial purpose. Across all three, the actus reus is the same — storage or possession — and what varies is the mens rea, which is inferred from conduct.

The corollary is the operative point: where the accused stores or possesses such material and fails to delete, destroy or report it, that failure supplies the inference of an intention to transmit under Section 15(1). The offence is complete at the stage of culpable retention; actual sharing is not required.

Possession, constructive possession and immediate control

The Court then expounded what "possession" means in the digital context. It is not confined to a saved file on a device. Drawing on the concepts of "constructive possession" and "immediate control," the Court held that a person who views child sexual exploitative material streamed online — without downloading it — may nonetheless be in constructive possession or control of it, because they exercise the power to access, watch and continue or stop the stream.

This reading closes the gap the Madras High Court had opened. The distinction between downloading and streaming is technologically thin and morally irrelevant; both involve the deliberate accessing and consumption of material whose very creation is the abuse of a child. The Court read Section 67B of the IT Act expansively to the same end, covering viewing, browsing and engagement with such material, not merely its creation or distribution.

The Section 30 presumption

The Court also brought Section 30 of the POCSO Act into play at the threshold stage. Section 30 establishes a statutory presumption of a culpable mental state once the foundational facts of an offence are shown. The Court held that this presumption is relevant even at the quashing stage: a court asked to quash proceedings cannot assume the absence of mens rea where the foundational facts — storage, possession, failure to delete or report — are present on the record. That framing made the Madras High Court's quashing untenable, since it had effectively presumed innocence of intent at the very stage where the statute presumes the opposite.

"Child pornography" becomes CSEAM

Beyond the doctrine, the judgment performed an act of vocabulary reform with real legal consequences.

The Court directed courts, authorities and Parliament to stop using "child pornography" and to adopt "Child Sexual Exploitative and Abuse Material" — CSEAM — and recommended a legislative amendment to that effect. The reasoning is that "pornography" implies consensual adult content and obscures the truth that every such image or video is a record of a real child being abused. The terminology change is not cosmetic: it reframes the offence as one of documented abuse, with downstream consequences for how investigators, intermediaries and courts treat the material. The Court paired this with directions on sex education and victim support.

Why the case matters

Just Rights for Children is among the most-cited POCSO decisions of 2024, and it immediately reshaped investigation and charging practice for online child-abuse material. By holding that retention without deletion or reporting can satisfy Section 15(1), and that streaming can amount to constructive possession, it brought the most common offending conduct squarely within the criminal law.

The decision is the anchor authority for the reach of Section 67B of the IT Act and for the reporting duties of intermediaries. It interacts with the DPDP and IT-rules ecosystem, with platform-takedown and proactive-monitoring obligations, and with the Centre's consideration of a CSEAM legislative amendment. Lower courts have since applied its three-offence taxonomy and its constructive-possession reasoning, and litigation continues over the line between innocent receipt and culpable retention — precisely the boundary the three-offence scheme was designed to police.

For practitioners, the judgment supplies a clean structure: identify which limb of Section 15 is engaged, locate the actus reus in storage or possession, infer mens rea from conduct (above all from a failure to delete or report), apply the Section 30 presumption once foundational facts are shown, and use the term CSEAM throughout. That structure, more than any single holding, is the case's enduring contribution.

Related on Valkya

• Ishwar Chand Sharma v. State of U.P.: POCSO and the parrot-like testimony quashed
• Shreya Singhal v. Union of India: striking down Section 66A

Sources

1. Supreme Court Observer — "Supreme Court holds that viewing, storing and possessing 'child pornography' is punishable under POCSO Act; overturns Madras HC decision": https://www.scobserver.in/journal/supreme-court-holds-that-viewing-storing-and-possessing-child-pornography-is-punishable-under-pocso-act-overturns-madras-hc-decision/
2. Verdictum — "Sex Education Essential For Reducing Sexual Crimes: Supreme Court" (2024 INSC 716): https://www.verdictum.in/court-updates/supreme-court/justice-rights-for-children-alliance-and-anr-v-s-harish-ors-2024-insc-716-child-pornography-1552368
3. LiveLaw — judgment PDF (Just Rights for Children Alliance v. S. Harish): https://www.livelaw.in/pdf_upload/just-rights-for-children-allianc-562192.pdf