The year is 1869. In the Punjab, a young girl of approximately fourteen years dies in the possession of a British Army major at Ferozepur Cantonment. The Lahore civil court acquits the officer on all charges. 

Through the hitherto unexamined case of Regina v. Roger Wally Glasse, this talk examines how colonial administration determined, before any court was convened, whether a girl possessed the juridical innocence upon whose recognition legal protection depended. Colonial legal governance produced differential protection for girls not only through the setting of age thresholds, but through a prior classificatory determination of whose age mattered at all.

Content note: This paper discusses sexual violence against a minor, the medical examination of a deceased child, and colonial legal proceedings arising from her death.

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