The issue of crime and punishment for young people in their juvenile years, a stage of life which marks the grey zone between early age and adulthood, is a complex one. It has been rendered more so with the Nirbhaya case of late 2012 in which one of the perpetrators was found to be a 17-year-old boy. The enormity of the crime and the numbing brutality that went into it re-ignited the debate about punishment for those in their mid-teens charged with committing heinous crimes such as rape and murder.
Since then the involvement of juveniles in several instances of heinous crimes has come to light. So, what should we do? Give them the same punishment that would be given to adults, or accept the plea that juveniles are at a very impressionable stage of their life and deserve a reformative penitentiary and reprieve even when they commit the most shocking crimes? The Modi government’s response to the conundrum, made available through a Cabinet decision on Wednesday, has turned out to be most unsatisfactory. It did not accept the view of a parliamentary committee on the subject, and has decided that in some cases criminals falling in the 16 to 18 age group may be dealt with on the same footing as adults and be proceeded against in terms of provisions laid down in the Indian Penal Code.
In other instances, however, their crime would be adjudicated by the Juvenile Justice Board, as is the case now. The determination to be made which young perpetrator of a heinous crime should be earmarked for the IPC route, and which for the green channel of the JJB, is to be made by the JJB on which sit psychologists and other experts. This sounds quite monstrous and would make for a bad law. A law deriving from unsound principles is likely to be struck down as it may fail the test of equality before the law. How can a juvenile rapist or murderer be given the maximum punishment and another get away lightly, as the Cabinet decision directs, no matter which authority makes the assessment?
Going further, the JJB appears to be ill-suited as an institution to decide if a particular juvenile should be sent through to the channel that may take him to the gallows? There seems to be clarity only about the fact that the Union Cabinet has overturned the outlook of a parliamentary committee which rejected the idea that any juvenile criminal should be dealt with under the IPC. Once this is established, the government seems eager to please both lobbies — the one that seeks stiff punishment and the other which asks for a softer and liberal approach — and risks falling between two stools.
