Govt changes tack on juveniles post rape

Days before the brutal gangrape of a paramedic in Delhi, the Women and Child Development ministry had circulated draft changes in the Juvenile Justice Act seeking more mainstreaming measures for children in the 16 to 18 years group and debarring death sentence or life imprisonment on them.

Updated on: Jan 12, 2013, 01:35:58 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Days before the brutal gangrape of a paramedic in Delhi, the Women and Child Development ministry had circulated draft changes in the Juvenile Justice Act seeking more mainstreaming measures for children in the 16 to 18 years group and debarring death sentence or life imprisonment on them.

One of the accused in the Delhi gangrape is a 17-year-old. This was dramatically opposed to what the WCD ministry had suggested after the gangrape.

The ministry now wants to bring amendments in the law to prosecute those in this age group guilty of committing heinous crimes - a decision termed by experts as a knee jerk reaction to the Delhi gangrape. WCD minister Krishna Tirath had said she would soon send a proposal to the law ministry for making amendment in the JJ Act, by which any juvenile caught in heinous crime - sexual assault, repeated sexual assault, rape - can be given stricter punishment.

Earlier, the ministry was of the view that the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) should be strengthened to protect the children, in conflict with law, below 18 years.

The proposed changes did not distinguish between the children in different age groups, especially those between the age of 16 and 18.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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