Chief Justice of India Surya Kant on Saturday said that while the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 allows children aged 16 to 18 to be tried as adults for the gravest offences after a careful preliminary assessment of their capacity and circumstances, the law must not lose sight of the fact that they are still children.
“The act does not ask us to forget the harm that may have been caused. It asks us to remember that the one who caused it is still a child,” the CJI said, speaking at the ‘National Annual Stakeholders Consultation’ organised by the apex court, on 10 years of the act. Organised by the Court’s JJ committee led by justice BV Nagarathna, in association with UNICEF, the consultation is being held at the Supreme Court’s Administrative Buildings Complex in New Delhi between October 10 and 11.
“Our answer to such a predicament is restoration and not retribution. He also called for old records to be destroyed on time and for the names of children in conflict with the law to remain off the internet. The judge also questioned whether Juvenile Justice Boards (JJBs) carried out the preliminary assessment of a child’s mental and physical capacity, mandated under Section 15 of the Act, with “consistency, expertise and sensitivity.
He said that children who come into conflict with the law often face interrupted schooling, family strain, poverty and, at times, substance use. Addressing the event, Supreme Court judge justice BV Nagarathna said the juvenile justice system must not treat children as a “file, placement or a statistic”, adding that the question of treating a child in conflict with law as an adult was one of the “most delicate fault lines” in India’s criminal justice system. The Supreme Court judge, however, refrained from calling for any change in legislation, saying the law was “largely clear on paper”. The real challenge lay in its implementation, she said. A JJB, she said, “is not intended to be a miniature criminal court.”
Most come before the law for the first time.
