Question:
If someone views child sexual material on their phone (no evidence of distribution), is POCSO attracted after Sept 2024?
If someone views child sexual material on their phone (no evidence of distribution), is POCSO attracted after Sept 2024?
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After 2024:
Possession → offence
Accessing/viewing → offence
Distribution → aggravated offence
No requirement of “permanency” or “storage.”
Updated On: Jul 10, 2026
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Approach Solution - 1
Yes. After the 2024 amendment (effective September 2024), POCSO explicitly criminalises the mere viewing / accessing of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), even without distribution or transmission.
Under the amended framework:
Mere viewing, accessing, browsing, or possessing child sexual material constitutes an offence.
Distribution or sharing is a separate, more serious offence — but not a prerequisite for liability.
This is consistent with global standards (e.g., US, UK, EU) where possession and accessing alone are criminal offences.
Key point:
Earlier case law sometimes required evidence of:
downloading,
storage,
circulation.
Post–Sept 2024, these requirements are no longer necessary. Mere viewing — even temporary — is sufficient for POCSO liability. Thus: \[ \boxed{Yes — viewing CSAM alone attracts POCSO after Sept 2024.} \]
Under the amended framework:
Mere viewing, accessing, browsing, or possessing child sexual material constitutes an offence.
Distribution or sharing is a separate, more serious offence — but not a prerequisite for liability.
This is consistent with global standards (e.g., US, UK, EU) where possession and accessing alone are criminal offences.
Key point:
Earlier case law sometimes required evidence of:
downloading,
storage,
circulation.
Post–Sept 2024, these requirements are no longer necessary. Mere viewing — even temporary — is sufficient for POCSO liability. Thus: \[ \boxed{Yes — viewing CSAM alone attracts POCSO after Sept 2024.} \]
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Approach Solution -2
The short answer is yes, and the reasoning becomes clear once the position before and after the September 2024 amendment is compared.
Before the amendment, viewing alone sat in a grey zone.Earlier practice and some case law treated mere viewing of child sexual abuse material as legally uncertain unless the prosecution could also point to downloading, storage or circulation, since those acts made possession or an intent to distribute easier to prove.
The amendment removes that grey zone.
Effective September 2024, the amended framework expressly criminalises viewing, accessing, browsing or possessing such material, treating each of these as sufficient on its own, without needing proof of storage or onward sharing. Distribution remains a separate and more serious offence, but it is no longer a precondition for liability at all.
Why the change makes sense.
Demand drives this material into existence. A person who only views it, never saving or forwarding it, is still consuming the exploitation of a child, and treating that as legally irrelevant would leave a large share of harmful conduct outside the Act's reach. This also brings India's position in line with jurisdictions such as the US, UK and EU, where accessing or possessing such material is punishable in itself.
Applying this to the facts.
Here, the person viewed the material on their phone with no evidence of saving or sharing it. Under the post-amendment position, that act of viewing by itself is enough to attract liability, since distribution is no longer a threshold requirement.
So the absence of distribution does not save the person from liability once viewing alone is established after September 2024. \[ \boxed{\text{Yes, POCSO is attracted. Post-September 2024, mere viewing or accessing of CSAM is itself an offence, independent of distribution.}} \]
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[Excerpted from the judgment delivered by Sathasivam, C.J.I. in Lalita Kumari v. State of Uttar Pradesh, (2014) 2 SCC 1 (hereafter ‘Lalita Kumari’)]
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Article 213(2)(a) postulates that an ordinance would cease to operate upon the expiry of a period of six weeks of the reassembly of the legislature. The Oxford English dictionary defines the expression “cease” as : “to stop, give over, discontinue, desist; to come to the end.” P Ramanatha Aiyar’s, The Major Law Lexicon defines the expression “cease” to mean “discontinue or put an end to”. Justice C K Thakker’s Encyclopaedic Law Lexicon defines the word “cease” as meaning: “to put an end to; to stop, to terminate or to discontinue”. The expression has been defined in similar terms in Black’s Law Dictionary.
The expression “cease to operate” in Article 213(2)(a) is attracted in two situations. The first is where a period of six weeks has expired since the reassembling of the legislature. The second situation is where a resolution has been passed by the legislature disapproving of an ordinance. Apart from these two situations that are contemplated by sub-clause (a), sub-clause (b) contemplates that an ordinance may be withdrawn at any time by the Governor. Upon its withdrawal the ordinance would cease to operate as well.
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The only other submission which we are required to deal with before we part with this matter is the argument of the learned counsel for the State that in view of the scheme of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 (hereafter ‘MMDRA’) which prohibits under Section 4 the carrying on of any mining activity in this country except in accordance with the permit, licence or mining lease as the case may be, granted under the Act, the appellants cannot claim any proprietary right in the sub-soil…
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Section 5 of the Factories Act provides that in a public emergency, the State Government can exempt any factory or class or description of factories from all or any of the provisions of the Act, except Section 67. Section 5 is extracted below: “5. Power to exempt during public emergency. — In any case of public emergency the State Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, exempt any factory or class or description of factories from all or any of the provisions of this Act except section 67 for such period and subject to such conditions as it may think fit: Provided that no such notification shall be made for a period exceeding three months at a time. Explanation.— For the purposes of this section ‘public emergency’ means a grave emergency whereby the security of India or of any part of the territory thereof is threatened, whether by war or external aggression or internal disturbance.” (emphasis supplied) The notification in its relevant part is extracted below:
“... NOW, THEREFORE, in exercise of the powers conferred by Section 5 of the Factories Act, 1948, the ‘Factories Act’ PART B Government of Gujarat hereby directs that all the factories registered under the Factories Act, 1948 shall be exempted from various provisions relating to weekly hours, daily hours, intervals for rest etc. of adult workers under section 51, section 54, and section 55 and section 56 with the following conditions from 20th April till 19th July 2020, –
(1) No adult worker shall be allowed or required to work in a factory for more than twelve hours in any day and Seventy Two hours in any week.
(2) The Periods of work of adult workers in a factory each day shall be so fixed that no period shall exceed six hours and that no worker shall work for more than six hours before he has had an interval of rest of at least half an hour.
(3) No Female workers shall be allowed or required to work in a factory between 7:00 PM to 6:00 AM.
(4) Wages shall be in a proportion of the existing wages (e.g. If wages for eight hours are 80 Rupees, then proportionate wages for twelve hours will be 120 Rupees).”
[Extract from judgment of the Supreme Court in Gujarat Mazdoor Sabha v. The State of Gujarat decided on 1 October, 2020, (hereafter ‘GMS’)] - In view of various counter claims regarding registration or non-registration, what is necessary is only that the information given to the police must disclose the commission of a cognizable offence. In such a situation, registration of a FIR is mandatory. However, if no cognizable offence is made out in the information given, then the FIR need not be registered immediately and perhaps the police can conduct a sort of preliminary verification or inquiry for the limited purpose of ascertaining as to whether a cognizable offence has been committed. But, if the information given clearly mentions the commission of a cognizable offence, there is no other option but to register a FIR forthwith. Other considerations are not relevant at the stage of registration of FIR, such as, whether the information is falsely given, whether the information is genuine, whether the information is credible etc. These are the issues that have to be verified during the investigation of the FIR. At the stage of registration of a FIR, what is to be seen is merely whether the information given ex facie discloses the commission of a cognizable offence. If, after investigation, the information given is found to be false, there is always an option to prosecute the complainant for filing a false FIR.
[Excerpted from the judgment delivered by Sathasivam, C.J.I. in Lalita Kumari v. State of Uttar Pradesh, (2014) 2 SCC 1 (hereafter ‘Lalita Kumari’)]
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