Criminals are made, not born: SC judge Sanjiv Khanna
Supreme Court judge Sanjiv Khanna inaugurates a pan-India campaign by NALSA to provide legal assistance to juveniles in prisons and secure their freedom from adult jails. The campaign aims to identify potential minors at the time of the offence, help them file necessary applications for claiming juvenility, and facilitate their transfer to child care Institutions.
No one is born a criminal but is made into one by circumstances, Supreme Court judge Sanjiv Khanna said on Thursday as he inaugurated a pan-India campaign by the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) aimed at identifying juveniles in prisons and providing them with essential legal assistance to ensure their freedom from adult jails.
The campaign, called “Restoring the Youth”, envisages identification of individuals who were potentially minors at the time of the offence, assisting them in filing necessary applications for claiming juvenility before the appropriate court and facilitating their transfer to child care Institutions in appropriate cases.
“Criminals are made by circumstances. No one is born a criminal. The path towards criminality is often a result and consequence of experiences and circumstances mostly shaped by neglect, external influences or lack of guidance,” justice Khanna, who is the executive chairman of NALSA, stressed while inaugurating the event.
The second senior-most judge of the Supreme Court added that the campaign aims to rewrite the narrative of juvenile justice by emphasising on compassion, redemption and a hope that no child remains confined within adult jails.
The pan-India campaign will be from January 25 to February 27, involving officials, lawyers and para-legal volunteers of NALSA from across the country for visiting prisons and identifying those who were juveniles at the time of the commission of the alleged offence. These teams will subsequently institute suitable legal proceedings to secure reprieve for the juveniles.
“The campaign ‘Restoring the Youth’ is a call to action, aligning with the principles of justice and the safeguarding of children’s rights, marking a significant step towards a more humane and developmentally appropriate treatment of juvenile offenders,” an official release from NALSA stated.
The Juvenile Justice Act prohibits lodging of juvenile delinquents in adult jails as they can only be sent to special homes under the law that are meant to serve as correctional homes.
A slew of Supreme Court judgments has also clarified that the claim of juvenility can be raised before any court, at any stage, and even after final disposal of the case. According to these judgments, if the court finds a person to be a juvenile on the date of commission of the offence, it is to forward the juvenile to the Juvenile Justice Board for passing appropriate orders, and the sentence, if any, passed by a court, shall be deemed to have no effect.
As recently as on January 17, the Supreme Court freed a woman in a 23-year-old murder case after noting that she was a minor at the time the offence was committed. Without going into the merits of her appeal, the top court noted that she had to be acquitted solely because she was less than 18 when the offence took place and yet, she had to undergo incarceration for over eight years.
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