HC Steps In After Sirsa Court Refuses Minor Rape Survivor's Plea to Terminate Pregnancy
Sirsa Minor Rape Survivor Pregnancy Termination: After a Sirsa court denied a 17-year-old rape survivor’s plea to terminate her pregnancy, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has directed PGIMER in Chandigarh to constitute a medical board and assess the case. The minor was raped by a relative multiple times.
North Desk Correspondent
Chandigarh, August 8
The Punjab and Haryana High Court has directed the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, to constitute a medical board to examine a 17-year-old rape survivor from Sirsa district of Haryana and, if medically permissible, carry out termination of her pregnancy. That’s nearly a month after her family’s first attempt to secure the procedure was turned down by a local court.
The order came on a writ petition filed by the minor after the Sirsa court, dismissed an identical plea, holding that a magistrate’s court did not have the power under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act, 1971, to permit termination beyond the statutory limit.
Sirsa Minor Rape Survivor Pregnancy Termination: The case
Sirsa Minor Rape Survivor Pregnancy Termination: The minor was raped multiple times by a relative during a stay at her maternal uncle’s house in Sirsa district, in the first week of March. She did not disclose the assault at the time. On her return home, when her mother noticed her withdrawn behaviour and questioned her, she disclosed what had happened.
An FIR was registered in July 7 in Sirsa, under Sections 64(2)(f) and 64(2)(m) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and Section 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012.
A medical examination the same day, followed by an ultrasound on July 8, confirmed the pregnancy. The Civil Hospital, Sirsa, referred her case on July 14 to a higher facility in Agroha after its medical board recorded that at 25 weeks and 1 day gestation, the case carried a higher risk of complications including postpartum haemorrhage and uterine injury.
What had happened
Sirsa Minor Rape Survivor Pregnancy Termination: According to her statement to police, the assault took place over roughly two weeks in March 2026, during a visit to a relative’s home in the Sirsa district. She has stated that a relative in the household, taking advantage of the fact that they shared sleeping quarters with other family members at night, forcibly established physical relations with her on multiple occasions after the rest of the household had fallen asleep.
She has said she stayed silent afterward “out of shame” and did not immediately tell her family. It was only weeks later, after her mother noticed a change in her behaviour and questioned her directly, that she disclosed what had happened — after which the family approached the police.
The Sirsa court’s refusal
Sirsa Minor Rape Survivor Pregnancy Termination: With the pregnancy already past the MTP Act’s standard 24-week limit, the family moved an application before the Sirsa court, seeking judicial permission for termination. The court dismissed the application last week, reasoning that Section 3 of the MTP Act empowers a registered medical practitioner to decide on termination, and that in any event the statutory ceiling of 24 weeks had already lapsed by the time the plea was filed, with the pregnancy then at 25 weeks and 7 days. The order held the application “not maintainable.”
That refusal left the family with no option but to approach the High Court in its extraordinary writ jurisdiction, which the petition itself frames as the reason for the delay: “the petitioner has no efficacious alternative remedy except to invoke the extraordinary writ jurisdiction of this Hon’ble Court under Article 226.”
What the High Court was told
Sirsa Minor Rape Survivor Pregnancy Termination: Before the High Court, counsel for the petitioner argued that the minor was entitled to termination and that her medical board report of July 14 had already referred her to a higher facility for further management — effectively flagging her case as one requiring specialist-level review rather than an outright denial of eligibility.
The Court disposed of the petition, directing PGIMER to have the minor examined by a duly constituted medical board and to carry out the termination “if permissible as per the advice rendered” — meaning the final medical call still rests with PGIMER’s board, not a guaranteed outcome of the order itself.
As of the High Court’s order, the case is not finally resolved — the minor was told to appear before PGIMER’s Medical Superintendent, and whether the termination goes ahead now depends on that fresh medical board’s assessment of feasibility and risk at an advanced gestational stage.
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