SC: Juvenile Justice Act for rehabilitation of minor offenders

The Supreme Court has ruled that the scheme of Juvenile Justice (care and protection of children) Act 2000 is meant for rehabilitation of minor offenders who have strayed, to bring them back to the main stream of life.

A bench comprising Justice Altamas Kabir and Cyriac Joseph also held that a juvenile offender who has not attained the age of 18 years on the date of commission of offence will be tried only under the Juvenile Justice Act by the Juvenile Board (Childrens Court).

The apex court in the judgment noted as will, therefore, be clear from the provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act 2000, as amended by the Amendment Act 2006 and the Juvenile Justice Rule 2007, the scheme of the act is to give children who have, for some reason or the other, gone astray to realise their mistakes, rehabilitate themselves and rebuild their lives and become useful citizen of society instead of degenerating into hardened criminals. The court while allowing the appeal of Hari Ram, who was about 16 years of age on the day of incident, i.e, November 30 1998 and was arrested in a murder case, set aside the judgment of the Rajasthan High Court which held that Hari Ram was not juvenile.

Under the Juvenile Justice Act an offender should be kept in a special home and cannot be sent to jail.

The apex court directed the Juvenile Justice Board, Ajmer, to release Hari Ram immediately if he has already undergone the maximum sentence for which a juvenile can be confined to a special home.