India, Sept. 22 -- A special POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act) court has acquitted seven persons accused of child marriage, sexual assault and dowry harassment after the woman at the centre of the case testified that she was already 18 years' old when she married in 2020, contradicting her previous police complaint that she was only 17.

Judge Harshal Kisan Bhalerao, special judge under the POCSO Act and additional sessions judge, Pune, on September 19, 2026, concluded that the evidence did not establish that the accused had solemnised the woman's marriage while she was a minor, that her husband had sexually assaulted or harassed her while she was a minor, or that her in-laws had physically or mentally harassed her f...