Highlighting the instances where young couples become intimate with each other and land in criminal cases were on the rise, the Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh High Court has denied relief to a man chargesheeted in a sexual assault case involving a minor girl despite her claiming her relationship with him was consensual and that she married him in 2024.

Justice Yash Paul Bourney said, “The cases of young couples having indulged in physical intimacy and the female partner being eventually found short of the age of majority, while the male partner having landed in the dragnet of law, are not uncommon ever since the enactment of the POCSO Act, 2012.…