Brijbhanu Barua
speaker
127 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 19 Jul
Brijbhanu Barua’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Another complication is the sheer prevalence of child marriage in India.
States like Assam and Rajasthan have begun aggressive clampdowns.
Under Indian law, the legal age of marriage is 18 for girls and 21 for boys.
Anything below that is a child marriage.
And because POXO overrides all personal and religious laws, sex within a child marriage is treated as child sexual abuse.
Surabhi Shripuri from Shakti Vahini works to stamp out child trafficking and child marriage.
In 2019, the Modi government strengthened India's child protection law, raising minimum sentences, expanding life imprisonment and introducing the death penalty for most severe offences against children.
The government also introduced fast-track special codes for sexual offence cases involving adults and children and by early 2025, there had been over 750 of these in 30 states and union territories covering more than 300,000 sexual offence cases.
The Indian government has never directly responded to concerns about consenting teenagers being caught up in Poxo.
But it continues to maintain that a law-strict under-18 rule is essential and that any sexual activity involving a minor must be treated as a criminal offence.
To hear from young adults who may soon be thinking about having children, I've come to IIT Guwahati in Assam, one of India's leading universities.
I'm sitting on campus with three PhD students in the late 20s.
Maitreyi, Manali and another student who's asked us not to use her name, so we'll call her Meera.
When was the first time that you heard about this law?
the Modi government insists it is doing a great deal to raise awareness.
Former MP Dr. Fauzia Khan says that silence is still a big part of the problem when it comes to awareness.
The big question is, should India lower the age of consent so that consensual relationships between 16 and 17-year-olds, for instance, don't get dragged into POXO?
Child Rights Lawyer, Surohisha Puri again.
Defense lawyer Feeba Nisha.
So when you ask whether the age of consent in India should be lowered to keep 16 and 17-year-olds out of POXO, people inside the system hesitate.
Showing 101–120 of 127 · page 6 of 7
← Previous
Next →