EDITORIALS

Unjustified Haste
Was the juvenile justice law changed in response to manufactured pressure?

n the end the lawmakers gave in to the mood of the public. By

passing the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children)
Amendment Bill, 2014 on 22 December, the Rajya Sabha
demonstrated how public pressure and the fear of going against
this so-called public sentiment is erasing the space for reasoned debate. Such a debate was essential before this law
which goes against the advice of the parliamentary standing
committee as well as the Justice J S Verma Committeewas passed.
It stipulates that anyone between the ages of 16 and 18 years,
charged with a crime for which the sentence is seven years or more,
can be tried under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) instead of the
Juvenile Justice Act. By doing this, the law not only contradicts
other laws pertaining to children that accept 18 years as the age
defining a juvenile, including the United Nations Convention on the
Rights of the Child that India has signed, but it rejects the belief
that reform and rehabilitation is the best course to follow while
dealing with children and adolescents who fall foul of the law.
Unlike the demonstrations that followed the dastardly gang
rape and subsequent death of Jyoti Singh on 16 December 2012,
the demonstrations demanding changes in the law were not
spontaneous. They coincided with the release of the youngest
convict who was released after the mandatory three years, and
the emotional appeal by Asha Devi to the government to stall
his release. The very visible presence of the Akhil Bharatiya
Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP)student wing of the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh and linked to the ruling Bharatiya Janata
Partyat the public demonstrations could not be a mere
coincidence. So was a mothers genuine sadness manipulated
to build up pressure on parliamentarians?
While the initial push for a change in the rape law came
about due to public pressure following the 2012 gang rape, we
should also remember that the Justice Verma Committee, while
considering changes in the criminal law, laid out the context,
looked closely at other global examples, and then prescribed
changes. It took on board a range of conflicting viewpoints and
arguments before coming to a conclusion. Despite similar pressures at that time, the Verma Committee had urged that the age
limit for juveniles remains at 18 years. This recommendation,
backed by many others, is based not only on the well-established
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concept of reform and rehabilitation, but on inputs about

the development of children into adults. The amendment has
summarily rejected all of this.
Although the law has been passed, we must question why it
was done in such haste. Asha Devis appeal that the juvenile
charged with raping her daughter should be held back needed
sympathetic handling. She should have been explained that this
was not possible under law, or even if the law was changed it
would not apply retroactively. Instead, incessant media coverage amplified the impact of her appeal, to the point of drowning
out all other dimensions that surround the issue of juveniles in
conflict with the law. A mood was manufactured. Misleading
statistics were bandied around about the increase in juvenile
crimes. Even the Union Minister of Women and Child Development, Maneka Gandhi, who steered this bill and was its main
proponent, chose to quote selective data on juvenile crime to
push her case.
The reality is that juvenile crime has remained about the
same as a proportion of overall crime, roughly 1%1.5%. It is
also well known that the majority of the crimes for which juveniles are charged have to do with theft and burglary. The concern about one juvenile charged with a heinous crime walking
free should not cloud our judgment on the overall picture of juvenile crime in the country or the kind of children who fall foul
of the law. Furthermore, the fact that stranger rapes form a very
small proportion of all rapes remained unaddressed as always
and thus marital rape and other forms of sexual violence were
again ignored.
What is most unfortunate is the manner in which concern for
womens safety was used to demand changes in the juvenile
law. There is simply no equivalence between the two. As child
rights advocates have emphasised, bringing juveniles under the
ambit of adult law could push more young people into crime.
India does not need laws pandering to retributive justice. What
it does need is a debate on strengthening the system dealing
with juvenile offenders and protective measures to ensure that
children of the poor, who cannot fight against unfair detention,
do not end up bearing the burden of this reversal of existing
provisions in the law.
decEMBER 26, 2015

vol l no 52

EPW

Economic & Political Weekly