Juvenile

Set up in all districts of the country, the juvenile justice board deals with children in conflict with law.

There have been several cases in recent years when the board has ordered juveniles to be tried as adults. This has been made possible after Parliament amended the juvenile justice act in December 2015 to allow children aged between 16 and 18 to be tried as adults for heinous offences such as murder and rape.

To arrive at the decision, the JJB takes note of the age of the accused and the offence. It assesses if the child is mentally and physically capable of committing the crime and knew the consequences of his action.

If the JJB decides against the student’s court trial, he will spend a maximum of three years in a reform home if found guilty of murder. If he is tried as an adult and found guilty, punish- ment could range from death to life imprisonment.

Child rights activist and advocate Anant Asthana, too, said that the JJB’S word would be final. Advocate Meera Bhatia, however, suggested caution. “First we have to find out whether he has actually done the crime. If he is found guilty, he could be tried as an adult for the crime,” Bhatia said.

The demand to lower the juvenile age limit to 16 gained ground after one of the convicts in the December 16, 2012 gang rape and murder of a physiotherapist in Delhi spent just three years in a reform home as he was a few months short of 18 at the time of the crime. His four accomplices were sentenced to death, a punishment upheld by the Supreme Court.