The personal accounts of trauma faced by those subjected to India's juvenile justice system, paints exactly the picture that the juvenile justice law intended to avoid.
Disclaimer: The names, addresses, and other indicators of identity of all the children interviewed for this study are anonymised in compliance with section 74 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015.
Santosh was only 14 years old when 3 policemen barged into his house in Delhi's north district. The chaos, the screaming, the image of his elder brother Ravi (17) being dragged by the collar escaped his comprehension. All he felt was fear, as he hid behind his mother who was begging the police to let go of her son.
While two policemen dragged Ravi out of the house, one stayed behind. Few minutes later, a voice called out - "woh doosre ko bhi le aa" (bring the other one also). His mother could not protect Santosh; he followed his brother's fate. In that moment, he ceased to be a "child'; he became a "juvenile" - a "child in conflict with law".
The Quint interviewed many children like Santosh and Ravi in an attempt to document the pains of navigating our criminal justice system as "children in conflict with law". We also interviewed lawyers who represent such children before juvenile courts, as well as child rights activists. We also visited juvenile homes in Delhi to grasp the perils of institutional response to juvenile delinquency.
Just recalling what happened that evening at a police station in Delhi's north district made Santosh visibly distraught, but he remembered all of it. He calls it a "nightmare", a "scar" that will never heal. The visuals of violence, the grimacing face of his brother, the fear, and the sounds - silence interrupted by shrieks of pain.
The police made Santosh (14) read the dandas they beat him up with. On the front it was written "aao milo sajna" (come meet me, lover), and on the back, "phir kab miloge sajna" (when will you meet me next, lover).
Every second spent in that remand room, the violence, the screams, what he saw, has been imprinted in Santosh's mind - the spectacle of police brutality, extreme trauma from which there was no escape.
After over 48 hours of torture, Santosh was finally produced before the Juvenile Justice Board. Despite visible signs of police abuse, the presiding Magistrate remanded Santosh to an 'Observation Home' - a custodial institution for juvenile offenders.
Acting upon the orders of the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB), Santosh was taken to an Observation Home in Delhi's north district. He said that he was not even medically examined and was made to sign two "large sheets" of paper, the content of which he could not comprehend.
The law on juvenile justice in India is founded upon the principles of "care", "protection", and "rehabilitation". The purpose is to ensure that children who are found to be in "conflict with law" are subjected to an institutional system which is aimed at guarding them from the trauma of an adult criminal justice system.
The starkest reflection of this is in policing. Despite the provisions in law for sensitivity training, separate juvenile units, and different procedures and use of language for apprehension of children - the police, in reality, often see a child in conflict with law, simply as a "criminal".
The perils of policing children in conflict with the law is further aggravated by the inherent biases in the psyche of the police personnel.
Afsana was detained several times and produced before the Juvenile Justice Board as an "addict", "rogue", and "beyond the control of anyone".
It was only after this cycle played out several times, that the police finally decided to produce Afsana before the Juvenile Justice Board. Before the Board, the police officer presented her as an "addict", "rogue", and "beyond the control of anyone".
Afsana was directed to be transferred from police custody to a de-addiction centre in Delhi. During the legal proceedings she had no lawyer, neither was there any social worker present for her assistance. She was moved from one institution to another, while the causes that led to her present state remained unaddressed.
“Child delinquency is not intentional, it is forced by circumstances,” says Ashish Kumar, Advocate, Director: Legal interventions, HAQ Centre for Child Rights.
Our interviews with lawyers, NGOs, officers at juvenile homes, and the children themselves revealed what makes the children most vulnerable to the net of criminality. Who is "getting caught" and why? Our research highlighted that mostly it is the collective failure and apathy of the institutions of care and informal social control - family, neighbourhood, and school - that pushes children towards delinquency.
Another set of cases that frequently come before the JJBs are "eloping for marriage" cases. These cases involve minor couples leaving their households for marriage, fearing their families' disapproval.
We also found that government-run schools often give up on such children, turn them away as "undesirables"; subjecting them to unaddressed feelings of hopelessness, frustration, and resentment.
Child-welfare workers and experienced juvenile lawyers informed us that a "strong culture of violence" within the family paves the way from children to act out, escape abusive households, and once chronically out on the streets, they learn how to "survive another day".
Failed by every possible avenue of care, these children are caught in the "revolving door" of delinquency. For them, turning aggressive, turning to substance abuse, is the only coping mechanism, and crime, the only option when "survival itself becomes the biggest challenge".
Children routinely refer to juvenile homes as "jails". Even the police call them "Bachon ka jail" (jail for children).
The personal accounts of trauma faced by those subjected to India's juvenile justice system, paints exactly the picture that the juvenile justice law intended to avoid. The actual institutional response to juvenile delinquency, versus how these institutions were envisaged to run, expose a disturbing "implementation gap" between the law and the ground reality.
Many states, including Delhi, are yet to fully comply with the requirements of the Juvenile Justice Act in letter and spirit. Moreover, requirements that have been met on paper, lack sensitivity in practice.
Child Rights lawyer and member of National Human Rights Commission's Core Group on Children, Anant Kumar Asthana, showed The Quint how the mandatory legal requirements are taken for granted.
Every police station is mandated to have at least one police officer designated as Child Welfare Police Officer who has to exclusively deal with cases of children. Ashish Kumar, a lawyer with the legal aid cell of JJB, told us that this is also not complied with. "All Child Welfare Police Officers are having multiple duties , contrary to the legal mandate", he said.
The mandate and intention of law also gets defeated by inadequate resources and superficial management of the existing ones. Much of the 'compliance' is done just to "tick off the boxes".
The head of Delhi's de-addiction centre for juveniles informed us that the institution is finding it extremely difficult to sustain rehabilitation efforts with a constrained budget. Further, a steep rise in the number of juveniles being sent to custody, has made matters worse.
Children in de-addiction centres are getting the bare minimum, while being deprived of proper education.
These children fail to see themselves beyond their immediate confines, and see themselves as the police portrays them, as criminals. This simply means that the law and its promise to rehabilitate, has failed. Punishment, packaged as "protection", is what these children experience, and so, they are not helped nor empowered to escape the net of criminality.
Post-release monitoring of the child is also absent. Acute understaffing in the probation department along with budgetary crunch results in "leaving released children to their destiny". Caught in the "revolving door" of penal institutions, they are often back again, and eventually end up in adult jails.
The system focused on addressing "children in conflict with law" is swift on criminalisation, but slow on meaningful rehabilitation. The state has found it convenient to let its 'adult' criminal justice system to kick in. The tougher task of addressing the socio-economic issues that force children into the net of criminality is ignored.
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