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Across the world, statutory rape laws exist to protect children from abuse, coercion and predatory adults. But what often gets lost in that conversation is how these very laws can also become instruments of control, invoked not because a child was abused, coerced or exploited, but because families disapprove of a consensual relationship their teenagers chose. In those moments, a law meant to shield children begins to blur into a tool for policing autonomy, sexuality, caste, class and family honour. The idea is to create a distinction between a predatory adult exploiting a child and two adolescents in a consensual relationship.