The law pertaining to juvenile crimes has come under the scanner yet again. Last week, a Supreme Court Bench comprising Mr. Justice Dipak Misra and Mr. Justice U.U. Lalit described the punishment for juveniles committing serious crimes as being “far too liberal” and urged the Attorney General to suggest that the government have a relook at the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000 (JJ Act). These comments arose in the context of adjudicating a crime that was committed 24 years ago by an accused who is now about 40 years old, and who has been appraised by the Supreme Court as having been a juvenile aged 16 years while committing the crime. Section 7A(ii) of the JJ Act states that if the court finds a person to be a juvenile on the date of commission of the offence, the case shall be immediately sent to the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB). The judges were of the opinion that if the accused, now a 40- year-old man, were presented before the JJB, he would be punished with an “admonition” or direction for “group counselling”, which would be “too liberal” and hence “an exercise in futility and a travesty of justice”.
There are three brief comments in response. First, the constitutionality of the JJ Act insofar as it allows all children to receive the benefits of the juvenile justice system irrespective of the gravity of the offence has been upheld by the Supreme Court in Salil Bali (2013) and Subramanian Swamy (2014). Hence, the issue of amending the JJ Act at this point is a purely policy or legislative issue, not warranting judicial intervention. Second, the interpretation of Section 7A of the JJ Act was settled in Jitendra Singh . Accordingly, cases such as this are to be sent to the JJB as the appropriate authority. Moreover, because judicial delays are common in our system, often the accused is much older by the time he/she is presented before the JJB, leading to a peculiar situation which no doubt needs to be resolved. But this too is a fault in our institutional design rather than a gap in the JJ Act per se . Third, there are several misconceptions about the rate of juvenile crimes in India. For instance, Mr. Justice Misra observed: “In a population of 1,000, one per cent may be juveniles who commit rape and murder. But even this one per cent can be a menace.” These statistics seem grossly overestimated. The National Crime Records Bureau report states that juvenile crimes comprise only 1.2 per cent of the total number of crimes in India, and that 65 per cent of them are property-related crimes such as theft, while just about 5 to 8 per cent constitute serious offences such as rape and murder. Although media reportage of juvenile crimes might have increased, this may not mean that instances of juvenile crime as a whole are in themselves increasing.