This judgment does not decide the pending criminal trial and does not hold that the alleged offence was committed: the Court expressly notes that none of the three scheme documents is a judicial determination of the offence. It strikes down only the indispensable-condition requirement in entry 7, leaving the remainder of the entry workable, and it does not strike down the State Scheme as a whole. The Rs 3,00,000 direction is specific to this petitioner under entry 7.
- Case
- Victim X v. State of U.P. and others
- Court
- High Court of Judicature at Allahabad
- Decision
- Citation
- 2026:AHC:220399-DB
- Bench
- Justice Saral Srivastava; Justice Garima Prashad
- Judgment by
- Justice Garima Prashad
- Case numbers
- WRIT - C No. 16193 of 2026
- Outcome
- Writ petition allowed on 23 October 2026; impugned documentary condition in entry 7 declared unconstitutional and struck down as severable; District Steering Committee decision dated 2 January 2025 quashed; Rs 3,00,000 to be released within ten days from the judgment.
Injury-report condition struck down; Rs 3 lakh to be released within ten days
On 23 October 2026, a Division Bench of the High Court of Judicature at Allahabad, comprising Justice Saral Srivastava and Justice Garima Prashad, struck down a documentary condition in the State's victim-compensation scheme that had denied financial assistance to a minor victim of aggravated penetrative sexual assault. The condition required, as an indispensable prerequisite, an injury report indicating penetrative sexual assault. The Court held that condition unconstitutional and violative of Article 14 of the Constitution, quashed the District Steering Committee's rejection of the petitioner's claim, and allowed the writ petition.
The State-respondents were directed to release financial assistance of Rs 3,00,000 to the petitioner under entry 7 of the scheme within ten days from the date of the judgment, to be deposited in the protected bank account maintained for the victim or dealt with under any other lawful arrangement made by the competent court to safeguard the minor's interests. All pending applications stood disposed of, with no order as to costs.
A minor's claim, a missing report, and a committee's rejection
The petitioner, a minor victim who approached the Court through her mother as her next friend, sought financial assistance under the Uttar Pradesh Rani Lakshmi Bai Mahila Evam Bal Samman Kosh Rules, 2015, referred to in the judgment as the State Scheme. Entry 7 of Annexure 1 covers aggravated penetrative sexual assault punishable under section 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, and provides Rs 3,00,000, in stages of Rs 1,00,000 within 15 days and the balance of Rs 2,00,000 within one month of the filing of the charge-sheet. Its stated prerequisites are the first information report, an injury report indicating penetrative sexual assault, and the charge-sheet.
In this case the first information report and the charge-sheet both invoke sections 5(m) and 6 of the POCSO Act, and the criminal trial is pending. But when the victim was taken for medical examination, consent was not given for the particular examination relating to penetrative sexual assault, so no injury report of the kind contemplated by entry 7 could be prepared. The District Steering Committee's decision dated 2 January 2025, communicated through an online response dated 27 April 2026, rejected the claim for that reason. The petitioner contended that the claim could not properly have been rejected on that ground alone, since she had been produced for medical examination and the first information report and charge-sheet already invoked the relevant POCSO provisions.
The State's defence, and the three questions before the Court
The State submitted that the Scheme is an independent welfare measure, separate from compensation under section 33(8) of the POCSO Act and rule 9 of the POCSO Rules, 2020, and that entitlement must be determined strictly in accordance with its conditions: entry 7 expressly requires all three documents, and an earlier Division Bench judgment had only dispensed with a visible physical injury, not with production of an injury report itself. The State added that the petition sought payment but did not expressly challenge the condition's validity, so the Court should not strike down any part of the Scheme. The Court framed three questions: whether production of such an injury report can validly be made an indispensable condition for relief; whether the condition defeats the Scheme's rehabilitative object and violates Article 14; and whether it may be struck down even without a specific prayer to that effect.
Why the condition failed: purpose, consent, and Article 14
The Court began from the Scheme's purpose. Rule 4(a), as quoted in the judgment, ensures monetary and medical relief to women and girl children who are victims of heinous crime and therefore require immediate relief; every condition in Annexure 1 must therefore further that purpose, not frustrate it. Relief under the Scheme is also in addition to POCSO compensation, since section 33(8) empowers the Special Court to award compensation for physical or mental trauma and immediate rehabilitation, and rule 9(6) of the POCSO Rules, 2020 expressly preserves relief under any other Central or State scheme. Each document then performs a distinct function: the first information report contains the first account of the alleged offence, the charge-sheet reflects the investigating agency's conclusion on the material collected, and the medical or injury report places the available medical findings before the authority. None of the three is a judicial determination that the alleged offence was committed, and even at a criminal trial an accused cannot be acquitted merely because an injury report is absent or does not record a penetrative injury; the case must be decided on the totality of the evidence. It would therefore be anomalous to make the same report an absolute condition for preliminary monetary relief.
The consent point was decisive. Section 27(1) of the POCSO Act applies section 164-A of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 to the medical examination of a child, and section 164-A(7) expressly provides that nothing in that section renders lawful any examination without the consent of the woman or of any person competent to give such consent on her behalf; the same protection has been retained in identical terms in section 184(7) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023. In Lillu alias Rajesh v. State of Haryana, (2013) 14 SCC 643, the Supreme Court held the two-finger test violative of the survivor's rights and observed that survivors are entitled to legal recourse that does not retraumatise them or violate their physical or mental integrity and dignity. A mandatory injury-report condition, the Court held, places the victim in an impermissible dilemma: either submit to the particular examination or lose the financial assistance intended for her rehabilitation. A welfare scheme cannot indirectly compel what the governing statute prohibits from being done without consent.
On Article 14, the Court applied the test restated by the Supreme Court in Kulsum Nisha v. State of Uttar Pradesh, 2026 INSC 617: a classification must be founded on an intelligible differentia with a rational nexus to the object sought to be achieved. Applied literally, entry 7 divides victims alleging the same offence into those for whom an injury report is available and those for whom it is not, a class that may include a victim who does not consent to the relevant examination, one examined after physical signs have disappeared, or one alleging an act which may not ordinarily leave a visible injury. Availability of an injury report has no rational connection with the Scheme's needs, and exclusion solely because such a report is unavailable frustrates the Scheme's object rather than furthering it; the distinction was therefore manifestly arbitrary and violative of Article 14. The Court added that penetrative sexual assault under section 3 of the POCSO Act is not confined to an act that must leave a visible physical injury, recalling Dalip Kumar alias Dalli v. State of Uttaranchal (16 January 2025) and Lok Mal alias Loku v. State of Uttar Pradesh (7 March 2025); and that a coordinate Division Bench had already held in Victim X in FIR No. 048 of 2025 v. State of U.P., Writ-C No. 12085 of 2025, 2026:AHC-LKO:2981-DB (14 January 2026), that the Steering Committee cannot refuse relief merely because an available injury report does not record an injury. The present case goes a step further, because here no such report was prepared at all for want of consent.
Severance, not wholesale invalidation; payment within ten days
The impugned condition was held severable. The requirement of an injury report indicating penetrative sexual assault, as an indispensable condition under entry 7, was declared unconstitutional and struck down, but the remainder of entry 7 remains workable on the first information report and the charge-sheet; where a medical or injury report is available, it may still be considered, but its absence cannot operate as an absolute bar. On the third question, the Court held that the absence of a specific prayer does not prevent effective relief where, as here, the rejection rests entirely on the impugned condition, the State defended its mandatory character, the parties addressed its legality, and no further evidence was required; and that under Article 226 a writ court may mould relief so that a legal injury is effectively remedied, since a mere direction to reconsider the claim, without removing the invalid condition, would leave the cause of rejection untouched.
Because the first information report and the charge-sheet invoke sections 5(m) and 6 of the POCSO Act, the petitioner satisfies the surviving mandatory requirements of entry 7. The District Steering Committee decision dated 2 January 2025, as communicated on 27 April 2026, was therefore quashed and the writ petition allowed. Readers should not conflate two timetables: entry 7's own stages are Rs 1,00,000 within 15 days and the balance of Rs 2,00,000 within one month of the filing of the charge-sheet, while the operative direction in this case is payment of the full Rs 3,00,000 within ten days from the date of the judgment.
BANTHRY ANALYSISFor law students: procedure must serve the scheme, not defeat it
The judgment is best read as a case about the relationship between procedure and purpose. The Court does not deny that a welfare scheme may prescribe a fair procedure for identifying eligible claims and protecting public funds; its point is that a procedural safeguard may assist the authority but cannot be converted into a barrier excluding an otherwise eligible victim for reasons unrelated to the scheme's object, and the Article 14 rational-nexus test gives that idea doctrinal form. The consent strand is the second lesson: the protection in section 164-A(7) of the old Code, carried into section 184(7) of the BNSS, is the legal guarantee that a victim's refusal of an examination cannot be turned against her. Finally, note the remedial modesty of the outcome: only the indispensable-condition requirement was severed, entry 7 otherwise stands, and available medical reports may still be considered. Striking down a condition is not the same as striking down a scheme.
- Allahabad High Court: Victim X v. State of U.P. and others, WRIT - C No. 16193 of 2026, 23 October 2026 (official judgment)paras 21, 30, 34, 37-38, 43; PDF pp. 6, 8, 9, 10, 11-12
READING PROMPTSQuestions for a closer reading
- Entry 7 of the State Scheme required three documents for compensation. Which document was missing in this case, and why could it not be prepared?
- How did the Court use Article 14's rational-nexus test to hold that the indispensable injury-report condition was manifestly arbitrary?
- The entry was not struck down wholesale. What survives after severance, and what is the operative payment direction in this case as distinct from entry 7's own instalment stages?
