The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that storing and watching child pornographic material constitutes an offence under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, Live Law reported.

A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice JB Pardiwala set aside the Madras High Court’s January judgement, which had held that merely storing child pornographic material without any intention to transmit it was not an offence under the Act.

The bench said that the High Court had committed an “egregious error” in quashing the criminal proceedings against a man who had been booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and the Information Technology Act for having downloaded and viewed two child pornography videos on his mobile phone.

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The Supreme Court restored the criminal proceedings against the accused.

The order on Monday was passed in an appeal filed by the non-governmental organisation Just Right for Children Alliance against the High Court’s ruling.

The High Court had said children were nowadays facing a serious problem of watching pornography and instead of punishing them, society must be “mature enough” to educate them, PTI reported.

The Supreme Court pointed to the degree of intention required for such an act to constitute an offence under Section 15 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.

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“To establish an offence under Section 15 sub-section (3), besides the storage or possession of the pornographic material involving a child, there must be some additional material or attending circumstances that may sufficiently indicate that the said storage or possession was done with the intent of any form of gain or benefit,” the bench said.

When there is material to indicate that the storage or possession of any child pornographic material was done “in lieu or in expectation of some form of gain or benefit”, it constitutes an offence under Section 15 sub-section (3) of the Act irrespective of whether such gains had been made, the Supreme Court said.