PROTECT CHILDREN
training them, not punishing them.
Ironically we can’t even be sure the child we’re trying really is the age he appears to be. Kids who are today 14 were born at a time when the level of birth registration was just 58% (in 2001). In many cases parents give an earlier age just to get the child into school (ask Gen. V.K. Singh!) The law makes no allowances for this Indian reality. We may end up punishing a 15 year old child, thinking he’s 16. If you’re between 16 and 18 in India you can’t vote, you can’t drive, you can’t inherit property — but under this Bill you can be sent to an adult prison for 20 years. Why can’t the normally compassionate Maneka Gandhi see what’s wrong with this picture?
It is really the Government’s job to implement the existing provisions for rehabilitating children in conflict with the law. In our country, child protection under the law has been marred by insufficient investments, lack of adequate number of Juvenile Justice Boards (JJB) and Child Welfare Committees (CWC), lack of institutional services such as Special Homes, and the absence of an effective monitoring mechanism. The Government cannot cast aside its responsibility by holding our children accountable for the failures of the juvenile rehabilitative system. The Government should fix the system, not bypass it and pass a law that victimises children. The Bill also creates a trial before the trial by giving the Juvenile Justice Board one month for a preliminary assessment of whether the child should be tried as an adult — a period so short that it could lead to a presumption of guilt, which itself violates the Constitution. As the Justice Verma Committee observed in 2013 while rejected the case for a draconian new law, “We cannot hold the child responsible for a crime before first providing him/her the basic rights given to him by the court.”
I’ve argued in Parliament that the Bill violates constitutional protections as well as India’s commitments before the United Nations. Most important, it betrays the trust of our nation’s children that we will create an India that protects and nurtures them. This misguided change must not be allowed to become law.
The author is a Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha