The Supreme Court has stayed the Rajasthan High Court’s order that criticised a POCSO court judge for using a “cut, copy, paste” method in her judgment and directed training. Notice has been issued to the State and further action has been halted for now.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday stopped the effect of strong remarks and directions that the Rajasthan High Court had earlier made against a special POCSO court judge in the case. A Bench of Justice JK Maheshwari and Justice Vijay Bishnoi was hearing an appeal filed by the judge concerned.
The appeal challenged a May 2025 order of a single judge of the Rajasthan High Court, where it was stated that the special judge had failed in her duty and had relied on a “cut, copy, paste” method while writing her judgment.
The High Court had even remarked that the judgment looked as if it had been drafted by a stenographer instead of the judge herself, and had ordered the Rajasthan Judicial Academy to give her training in judgment writing.
On Friday, the Supreme Court decided to put a hold on those directions. The Court said,
“Issue notice returnable in four weeks. In the meantime, further action pursuant to the directions issued in the order impugned shall remain stayed.”
Notice has also been issued to the State of Rajasthan.
This case came from an FIR in Jaisalmer involving offences under the POCSO Act. Based on the same FIR and overlapping evidence, two different trials were held — one against an adult accused and another against a juvenile. Both trials ended with convictions by the trial court.
When the conviction of the juvenile was challenged before the High Court in a criminal appeal with an application for suspension of sentence, the High Court examined the judgment carefully.
It noticed that large parts of the reasoning in the juvenile’s judgment were the same as passages in the judgment against the co-accused. The High Court concluded that the trial judge had not properly carried out her responsibility and had instead used a “cut, copy, paste methodology.”
It even observed that the judgment appeared to have been prepared not by the judge but by a stenographer.
Because of this, the High Court directed that the Rajasthan Judicial Academy should train the officer in judgment writing. It also ordered that these observations be placed in the judge’s annual confidential report, but only after seeking her response.
Feeling aggrieved, the judge approached the Supreme Court. She argued that the remarks made by the High Court were too harsh since the mistakes in the judgment were only small clerical errors and had not affected the actual substance of the case.
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Her petition pointed out that even though the High Court criticized the style of judgment writing, it still upheld the conviction and refused to suspend the sentence, which showed that the judgment itself had no illegality.
The judge admitted that some minor clerical errors had crept into the judgment, such as a wrong serial number of a prosecution witness, but stressed that the testimony was otherwise recorded correctly.
The petition also argued that such minor mistakes were not substantive errors but merely clerical ones and could have been corrected under Section 362 CrPC if they had been brought to her notice.
The petition further said,
“While being posted as Special Judge in POCSO Court, she has always been able to achieve the pace of disposal of cases required under the POCSO Act and the quantum of work disposed by her shows that she has dedicated almost entire time available at her disposal towards discharging judicial functions. Therefore, it was wholly disheartening and discouraging for the petitioner to have been branded with the imputation of engaging in irrelevant work.”
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Taking note of her plea, the Supreme Court stayed the operation of the High Court’s order on Friday.
Senior Advocate Siddhartha Dave along with advocates Javed Khan, Vanya Gupta, Shrey Kapoor, and Tanisha Kaushal appeared for the petitioner before the top court.
Case Title:
Sonika Purohit v. State of Rajasthan.
Read Order:
Click Here to Read Previous Reports on POCSO Case
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