The juvenility of any young offender has to be determined at the time of his production in the court by the police. In case of any doubt about his age, the offender will have to undergo juvenility test. The Supreme Court has given this path-breaking ruling faced with numerous cases where an offender, who is tried, convicted and sentenced, later claims to be a juvenile.
Realising that certain safeguards had to be put in place to avoid recurrence of such instances, the court directed magistrates to conduct a mandatory inquiry into an offender’s juvenility if he appears to be juvenile physically. A bench of Justices TS Thakur and Madan B lokur through separate judgements held, “Whenever an accused, who physically appears to be a juvenile, is produced before a magistrate, he or she should form a prima facie opinion on the juvenility of the accused and record it.”
In the event where the magistrate has a doubt over the age of the accused, the judgement added, “The magistrate should conduct an age inquiry as required by Section 7A of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000 to determine the juvenility or otherwise of the accused person.”
These guidelines formed part of an appeal decided by the Court where a man, aged 39 years, who was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for killing his wife for dowry, was found to be a juvenile on enquiry ordered by the apex court. With the conclusion being in his favour, the court was left with no option but to send him to a Juvenile Justice Board for working out the appropriate amount of fine payable by him as punishment for the offence.
Justice lokur, who laid down the guidelines, felt that a situation such as in the case decided by it was encountered frequently. Not only do such cases lead to violation of the JJ Act but even vitiate the entire trial leading to loss of judicial time and resources.
“It is possible that the prosecution or the investigating officer may be under a mistaken impression that the accused is an adult. If the magistrate has any iota of doubt about the juvenility of an accused produced before him, Rule 12 (of JJ Rules) provides that a magistrate may arrive at a prima facie conclusion on the juvenility, on the basis of his physical appearance.”
Simultaneously, the Court mandated the Magistrate to conduct an inquiry to determine the age of the accused. This would ensure a juvenile to be kept away from adult under trial prisoners and from incarceration in jail, which is not conducive to their well-being, the judge said.
Even the poor economic status of a juvenile also forced the Court to put the onus on the Magistrate. A 2011 study by National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) found nearly 56 per cent juvenile offenders to be illiterate and almost 57 per cent to fall into the lowest income category. Further, international obligations under the Child Rights Convention and Beijing Rules required legal guardians in the legal process to ensure protection of the rights of a juvenile.