Too much time has gone waste; do not delay
The Supreme Court's recent suggestion to the Union Government to take a second look at the juvenile justice law has re-ignited the debate on how juveniles, convicted of heinous crimes, should be punished. The comment was made while the apex court was hearing an appeal on April 6 by a murder convict, fighting for a lighter sentence on the ground that he was a juvenile at the time of committing the crime. Under the existing law, the maximum punishment that can be given to a juvenile is a three-year sentence to be served at a juvenile justice home. This is based on the assumption that children are not always mature enough to understand the consequences of their actions and, therefore, deserve to be treated with compassion and given a second chance.
However, as times have changed, so has the mind of the juvenile criminal. Today, an increasingly large number of crimes, especially heinous ones like murder and rape, are committed by older teens that may not have turned 18 yet but are nevertheless fully aware of the consequences of their actions, as the Supreme Court noted in the April 6 hearing. These youngsters then use the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000, to get away without any serious punishment. This is a travesty of justice — as the December 16 Delhi gang rape case stands proof. It was the youngest perpetrator, only a few months from his 18th birthday, that was the most vicious of the lot, and yet he spends only a little more than two years in a reform home while his co-convicts face the death penalty.
After the Modi Government came to power, Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi said that she would seriously push for amending the juvenile justice law. Her Ministry also proposed that juveniles between the ages of 16 and 18 years, who had been convicted of serious crimes or were found to be repeat offenders in cases like kidnapping and child trafficking, be given appropriate prison terms. However, these proposals for reform were rejected this February by a parliamentary panel looking into the matter.
There has also been a strong backlash from the human rights brigade and sections of the intelligentsia who argue that a civilised society should not hold its children to the same judicial standards as adults are. Such has been the strength of their impassioned pleas that the uninitiated could be forgiven for thinking that the Government was proposing to hang 10-year-old pickpockets. This is the kind of strong opposition that the Government is up against. The Supreme Court's April 6 comment should help strengthen the case of the Government and those pushing to change the juvenile justice law. However, many obstacles lies ahead, and it is possible that the matter will again fall off the radar and be forgotten. Senior Union Ministers who have been tasked with studying the contentious issue must not allow this to happen. The Juvenile justice law should be amended at the earliest.