Nearly a decade after the Juvenile Justice Act came into force, more than 50,000 children in conflict with the law in India are stuck in limbo, as the system has failed them spectacularly. The India Justice report published recently reveals that there is a huge backlog of cases in India’s 362 juvenile justice boards, with pendency ranging from 83% in Odisha to 35% in Karnataka. The aim to decentralise the juvenile justice system has backfired, as children continue to languish in captivity like undertrial prisoners in the adult justice system. Ninety-two per cent of India’s 765 districts have constituted JJBs, but one in four boards operated without a full bench. A full bench comprises a special magistrate and two social worker members. On an average, a JJB has a backlog of 154 cases. While highlighting the lack of transparency, Maja Daruwala, Chief Editor of the India Justice Report, said the findings of the study were a warning sign.
The report highlights that 30% of JJBs do not have an attached legal services clinic, leaving children without vital support. Alarmingly, only 11 districts in the country meet the basic minimum standards required to deliver justice in a child’s best interest. Residential infrastructure for children is also sorely lacking, with 14 states, including large ones like Gujarat and Maharashtra, not able to provide a single ‘place of safety’ for juveniles aged between 16 and 18, a mandatory requirement under the Act. There are only 40 homes exclusively for girls all over the country, giving rise to the possibility of their sexual exploitation. Absence of proper facilities forces children to be moved far from their homes, making access to legal representation difficult. Also, there is the very real threat of unsafe mixing of age groups and offence categories, which is what the Act was meant to eliminate. What the study also highlighted was the absence of credible national-level data on juvenile justice. The IJR report had to file more than 250 RTI applications to garner some information. However, of over 500 replies received from 28 states and two Union Territories, 11% were rejected, 24% received no response, 29% were merely transferred, and only 36% provided usable information.
In the past decade, the juvenile justice system has been suffering from the same infirmities that plague the adult criminal justice machinery—delays, obfuscation, and bureaucratic indifference. Children unfortunate enough to be trapped in the juvenile justice system may have to languish for months and years on end before they are heard. It is indeed a cruel irony that the most vulnerable section of society is subjected to the vagaries of a system that was meant to shield them from danger and uncertainty.
