MUMBAI: Three months after a mother approached police with a sexual abuse complaint involving her 16-year-old son, a special Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act court recently granted bail to four of the six men arrested in the case. The boy had met the accused on a gay dating app.In his statement to the magistrate, the boy has said that he had only told three of the accused his actual age. In his police statement, he named 26 people with whom he had allegedly been involved sexually or just chatting on the app. He also paid amounts ranging from Rs 15,000 to Rs 65,000 to four of the men he met on the app. A school teacher, one of the accused, has not been given bail.In its bail order allowing release of the 54-year-old businessman and father of two, the court said, "No doubt the victim boy is 16 years old. However, accused also doesn't have any criminal antecedent. He is not a professional offender. Keeping him in jail till case is decided on its merits will amount to pre-trial conviction."The court also considered the fact that a chargesheet has been filed against him. The FIR was lodged on June 8. The matter came to light in May after the child's mother caught a 20-year-old old man sneaking out of her 3BHK flat at 3am. The statements of both mother and son are part of the chargesheet.The boy said he had borrowed Indian currency from his father on the pretext of helping out a friend and the dollars were transferred with the help of his father's credit card. The boy said his parents were divorced. While he lives with his mother and a younger sibling, his father lives in the vicinity. He said that during his tenth grade, his mother had given him a room for studying, which was close to the flat's main door.The boy said that he joined the app last year claiming he was an adult. He said that after chatting and exchanging nude pictures with the men, he would meet them at designated spots. He said that in February, he confided in his mother that he didn't have feelings for girls and liked boys. At this, he said, his mother took him for counselling to a doctor.The boy said that on May 17, at 3am, when his mother woke up to drink water, she saw a man walking out of his room. She asked the man his name and when she asked her son who he was, the boy told her he was a friend. Suspecting that something was amiss, his mother took his phone and saw the app and his sexually explicit chats. He said that on May 23, his mother admitted him to a psychiatric clinic.Several chats are part of the chargesheet, along with medical reports of the boy.The mother in her statement told the police that during a counselling session the boy confided in the doctor about a man who had sexual relations with him since April 2017. The woman said this made her go to the police. The boy's statement was recorded on June 11. In it he took the names of several men, who were subsequently booked. The mother alleged that the men had taken advantage of her son despite knowing that he was a minor. She said that when her son confided in her about his feelings for the same sex, she was confused about how to handle the situation and hence took him to a psychiatrist.

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