A person should not be stigmatised for a crime committed as a juvenile, the Supreme Court has held.
The law requires all past records of a juvenile’s crime to be erased to afford him a fresh start in life. The objective of the Juvenile Justice Act is to re-intergrate a person who committed a crime while under 18 rather than punishing him perpetually.
A Bench of Justices U.U. Lalit and Vineet Saran made the observations in a short judgment on November 29 while upholding the appointment of a man as SI in the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF).
The authorities had cancelled his appointment after he revealed in an official form that a criminal case had once been registered against him for teasing a girl while he was a juvenile. However, he was acquitted after the girl’s parents had ‘pardoned’ him and did not testify in court.
The Rajasthan government had ordered the government to appoint him but the Centre chose to appeal in the apex court last year.
The judgment, authored by Justice Saran, upheld the High Court decision. Justice Saran, in his judgment, referred to Section 3 of the Juvenile Justice Act.
The Section, which perpetuates the “principle of fresh start” in juvenile justice law, provides that “all past records of any child under the Juvenile Justice system should be erased except in special circumstances”.
