Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant on Saturday said that a child in need of care and protection should not be exposed to humiliation, stigma or exclusion or else the institutions meant to provide for their rehabilitation will become the reason for such victims to remain silent.
But when the system encounters a child struggling with substance use, the questions are different: safety, treatment, counselling and rehabilitation. The Supreme Court has been dealing with the rising concern of substance abuse among children, as he quoted an August 2026 study published in The Lancet Regional Health – Southeast Asia, which estimates that more than one in five teenagers in India are at moderate-to-high risk of substance use.
CJI was addressing a seminar on “Restoring Childhood, Preventing Drug Abuse and Re-integration of Children in Need of Care and Protection” in Patna. “Substance abuse among children must therefore be understood not only as a public health concern, but equally as a child-protection concern…It is how we ensure that a child who encounters it does not lose the opportunity to grow, learn, recover and belong,” CJI said. CJI said, “The law must respond firmly to those who exploit children and circulate drugs. It is here that the various stakeholders – police, hospital, school, family, court or legal service institutions – must help create conditions in which the child can once again experience what childhood ought to provide, namely, education, relationships, play, trust and the confidence of a future beyond the present difficulty, CJI said.
The response to perpetrators of such crimes should differ from the response when child victims come before the court.
