Juvenile delinquency : Offence or crime
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: May 10 , 2014 -

Fire at Kendra Vidyalaya (Central School) at Lamphelpat : Pix - Arunkumar Thongam (DIPR)

The inferno which gutted 15 rooms of Kendriya Vidyalaya, Lamphelpat including the Principal's room, staff room, laboratories and library was no accident as the unfolding developments indicate.

Though the exact cause could be ascertained only after a thorough investigation, it is moving closer and closer to arson.

The news is disturbing and what is even more disturbing is the report about arrest of five youngsters including three juveniles in connection with the arson.

One does not need any reminder that schools or for that matter all educational institutions are huge assets for human civilization.

In fact, schools are the fountainhead of human resources and human capital. Again, human resources are the most precious resources mankind has at their disposal.

It is a double tragedy if the inferno was not any mishap but pure arson, and the arsonists are former students of the school who were expelled for some reasons.

Obviously, the students have some serious grievances against the school authority and they have committed a very severe offence.

We call it offence because all the accused are juveniles and juvenile delinquency is not something uncommon in the contemporary history of human civilization.

Almost all nation States and their legal systems prescribe specific procedures for dealing with juveniles, such as juvenile detention centres, and courts.

In common parlance, a juvenile delinquent is a person who is typically under the age of 18 and commits an act that otherwise would have been charged as a crime if they were an adult.

Depending on the type and severity of the offence committed, it is possible for persons under 18 to be charged and tried as adults. India too has its own set of laws and legislations for dealing with juvenile delinquents.

There is the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000 which was amended in 2006 and again in 2011. Eight Writ Petitions alleging Juvenile Justice Act and its several provisions to be unconstitutional were heard by the Supreme Court of India in second week of July 2013 and were dismissed, holding Juvenile Justice Act to be constitutional.

Demand for reduction of age of juvenile from 18 years to 16 years were also turned down by the Supreme Court, when Union of India stated that there is no proposal to reduce the age of a juvenile. But frankly we are not sure if Manipur has any rehabilitation centre for juvenile delinquents.

All the legislations enacted in favour of treating juvenile delinquents with care and leniency is rooted in the argument that they are not hard-core criminals and the newly imbibed criminal tendency can be corrected with little inputs in the form of counselling, detention if necessary etc.

The fear that treating delinquents as hard-core criminals would only foster criminal tendency in the young minds has its own logic. Coming back to the Kendriya Vidyalaya inferno, there is no doubt the loss is enormous.

But what is more perturbing than the physical loss is the mental disposition of the young students. Their age is still tender and their mental frames can be certainly re-oriented to the right direction with correct inputs.

The Chief Minister has shown his compassion by visiting the devastated school but our question is, will the State show its responsibility of correcting the young, wayward students.

Or will the State bracket the arson within the classic concept of crime and treat the arsonists accordingly?

By raising this question, we are in no way implying "Spare the rod and spoil the child".

Yet, we would like the State to see the differences between 'juvenile' and 'adult' and for that matter 'offence' and 'crime'.

As for the adults, there would be no complication for the law to take its own course.