The petition said twenty-six weeks, the Medical Board said twenty-two, and the Court went with the Board

A suo motu reference for a survivor of sexual assault reached the Indore Bench, was examined, and was decided inside two days. On the one fact that decides everything, the Court took the Board’s figure over the file’s.

In a case about terminating a pregnancy, a single number carries the whole statutory scheme. Under twelve weeks, one registered medical practitioner can act. Between twelve and twenty weeks, two must. Up to twenty-four weeks, only for the categories of women that Rule 3B lists — among them survivors of sexual assault, rape or incest. Past twenty-four weeks, no doctor can act on the statute alone and somebody has to go to court.

So the gestational age is not a detail in the background of these cases. It determines who may decide, and how fast.

On 23 September 2026, sitting at Indore, Justice Sandeep N. Bhatt had two figures for the same pregnancy.

Two days, start to finish

The matter reached the Court as a suo motu writ petition — the mechanism a Division Bench of the same High Court built in February 2025, in W.P. No. 5184/2025, for exactly this situation. Under that protocol, when a rape is registered and the medico-legal case shows a pregnancy past twenty-four weeks, the Station House Officer sends the survivor to the District Court, preferably the Special Judge under the POCSO Act. That Judge refers her to the medical officer or Board for a report, regardless of whether any application for termination has been filed, since such an application would not be maintainable before him. The report and the reference then go to the nearest Registry of the High Court, which registers the matter as a suo motu writ petition under Article 226 and lists it immediately before the Bench holding the roster, so that orders can be passed without undue delay.

The machinery moved at the pace it was designed for. By an order of 21 September 2026 the Court directed an examination. The Medical Board at MTH Hospital, Indore submitted its report on 23 September. The same day, the Court took it on record and decided the case.

The figure that governed

The petition, the order records, showed a pregnancy of more than twenty-six weeks. The Board’s report of 23 September put it at twenty-two, and opined that the pregnancy could be terminated, the survivor being found fit for the procedure.

Justice Bhatt proceeded on the Board’s assessment. Considering the report, the Court held, no further report was required: it had come on record that the survivor had been examined by the Medical Board, and on the Board’s opinion termination was possible because she was found to be fit.

That is a short passage, and it does the work of the judgment. A figure entered on a police or court record before any clinical examination is an estimate; the Board’s is a finding by the people qualified to make it, on examination, and it is the one the order is built on. The Court did not send the discrepancy back for reconciliation, and did not treat the higher figure in the file as a reason for a further round of reports — which, in a matter where every additional day narrows the medical options, would have cost the survivor something real.

The practical consequence is worth noticing. At twenty-two weeks the case sits inside the twenty-four-week ceiling that Rule 3B of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Rules, 2003 opens for survivors of sexual assault. On the figure in the petition it would have sat outside it. Two numbers, two entirely different legal positions, and the one that counted was the clinical one.

The framework the Court set out

Before granting permission the order reproduces the statutory scheme in full: Section 3(2) of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971, with its twelve-week and twenty-week thresholds, and Rule 3B, with its seven categories of women eligible up to twenty-four weeks — survivors of sexual assault, rape or incest; minors; women whose marital status changes during the pregnancy through widowhood or divorce; women with a major disability under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016; mentally ill women; cases of foetal malformation carrying a substantial risk of being incompatible with life; and women with pregnancy in humanitarian settings or declared disaster or emergency situations.

It then sets out the Supreme Court’s decision in X v. Principal Secretary, Health and Family Welfare Department, reported at 2023 (9) SCC 433, quoting three paragraphs. Paragraph 94 explains that the impact of an unwanted pregnancy on a woman’s physical or mental health must take account of the social, economic and cultural factors in her actual or reasonably foreseeable environment. Paragraph 101 describes reproductive rights as extending beyond the choice to have or not have children, to the freedoms and entitlements that let a woman decide freely on all matters relating to her sexual and reproductive health, free from coercion or violence. Paragraph 114 states that Article 21 protects the right of a woman to undergo termination where her mental or physical health is at stake, and that it is the woman alone who has the right over her body and is the ultimate decision-maker on whether she undergoes an abortion.

What was directed

Permission was granted, with the doctors directed to perform the procedure after fresh verification of the survivor’s physical and mental fitness, and thereafter to follow the guidelines of the Division Bench in W.P. No. 5184/2025.

Those guidelines carry the safeguards: the procedure in the presence of an expert team, who explain the risks to the survivor and her family; a paediatrician, a radiologist and such other doctors as are required to be available; post-operative care to the extent needed; and preservation of a foetal sample for DNA examination, to be handed to the prosecution for use in the criminal case, in the manner provided by Rule 6(6) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Rules, 2020. The privacy of the survivor is to be maintained strictly, in view of Section 5A of the 1971 Act.

The Court directed that the procedure be carried out as expeditiously as possible, preferably within a day or two, and recorded that because a criminal offence stood registered, the preservation of the foetal DNA samples and the connected steps were to be attended to so that the interest of justice would also be served. A copy of the order was to go to counsel for the State for compliance.

The petition was disposed of on those terms.