Today, The Supreme Court
will have the opportunity to declare the law on whether it was injustice to
release a juvenile convict involved in a brutal crime in compliance with the
written law and without proof to show he has reformed.
The court
may take a call on whether it should adjudicate within the narrow limits of the
Juvenile Justice Act and release the juvenile convict or demand his mental
assessment reports to show three years in a special home has reformed him and
that he is no longer a threat to society.
If the court believes the contention of Delhi
Commission for Women (DCW) chairperson Swati Maliwal that the juvenile convict
is a “serious threat to society,” a Bench of Justices A.K. Goel and U.U. Lalit
can use extraordinary powers under Article 142 to do “complete justice.”
The Bill
prescribing that juveniles aged 16-18 and accused of heinous offences, as in
this case, should be tried as adults, is stuck in the Rajya Sabha. The Juvenile
Justice Act, as it stands now, only requires juvenile offenders to spend three
years in a special home. It is somehow expected by this law that they would
reform within this time and be ready to be assimilated back into society.
The statute does not
distinguish between juvenile offenders guilty of heinous crimes and those in
care homes for lesser offences. The statute banks on the legal fiction that all
juveniles commit crime without intention and need to be reformed.
The Supreme
Court itself had recently poked holes in the juvenile law. “There can be a
situation where a commission of an offence may be totally innocuous or emerging
from a circumstance where a young boy is not aware of the consequences. But in
cases of rape, dacoity, murder, which are heinous crimes, it is extremely
difficult to conceive that the juvenile was not aware of the consequences,”
Justice Dipak Misra said in a recent order.
Legal
experts argue that there is no other choice but to release the juvenile convict
as there is no clear statutory backing to continue his detention. But the DCW’s
petition contends that there are other alternatives to releasing the convict.
One of them is Rule 32 of the Delhi Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of
Children) Rules, 2009, which envisages long-term institutional care as a last
resort in serious cases like the present one. The convict should not be
released from institutional care until his mental assessment finds him fit for
social reintegration and rehabilitation, the DCW argues.
Again DCW
lawyers intend to interpret a proviso in Section 16 of the Juvenile Justice
Act, 2000 (Amendment in 2006), which says a juvenile offender can be kept in
“protective custody” by the State government for whatever period it thinks fit.
“There is a
serious apprehension considering the heinous nature of the crime committed by
the respondent [the juvenile convict] as well as his behavior and attitude in a
special home confirmed by the government agencies that the respondent may
continue to have criminal/perverse bent of mind, which poses a serious threat
to women in particular and society at large,” the DCW contends.
The petition
contends that the juvenile has shown no remorse and quotes from an Intelligence
Bureau report that he has even been “radicalized.” It further says his release
now will also spell danger to himself: there is a possibility that he may be
lynched. This would muddy the waters further for a justice administration
system, which believes that rule of law reigns supreme.