The Supreme Court has asked the Centre to urgently fill gaps in the Juvenile Justice Act 2015 through legislation or by an ordinance of the Executive to determine the category of crimes, which are not heinous but are still punishable for 7 years as with heinous crimes like rape, murder and terrorism.
The bench of Justice Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose on Thursday temporarily redefined ‘serious’ and ‘heinous’ offences under the JJ Act while deciding a four-year-old case in which a driver of a car, a minor, just four days short of his 18th birthday was involved in a hit-and-run case where the victim, a 32-year-old IT professional died. The query before the court was: “Whether an offence prescribing a maximum sentence of more than 7 years imprisonment but not providing any minimum sentence, or providing a minimum sentence of less than 7 years, can be considered to be a ‘heinous offence’ within the meaning of Section 2(33) of The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015?”
The driver of the Mercedes car that fatally knocked down the IT professional was tried in court as an adult after the Juvenile Justice Board recommended that he be tried so as he had committed a heinous offence under Section 304 (Culpable homicide not amounting to murder), the punishment for which is 10 years. The legislative intent on heinous offences committed by juveniles as also international conventions were discussed by the bench. The JJ Act of 2015 defines ‘Heinous offences’ to mean offences for which the minimum punishment under any law is imprisonment for 7 years or more.
Exercising judicial restraint, the court refused to omit the term ‘minimum’ from the above definition, as suggested by counsel Siddhartha Luthra, as the task before the court was to interpret the statute and not ‘solving a jigsaw puzzle where we have to put all the pieces in place.’ The bench agreed with the view of Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the juvenile, who pointed out that a lacuna in the scheme of an Act is for the legislature to correct and court cannot add or subtract.
The court pointed out that there is a 4th category of offences, apart from petty, serious and heinous offences, which has been not been acknowledged by the draftsmen of the Act of 2015. The court said that the Minister, introducing while introducing the bill in the Parliament had made references to murder, rape and terrorism as heinous offences, and the same cannot be equated to Section 304, where death occurred when a juvenile caused a road accident and ran.
Until the Centre makes appropriate amendment in the legislation, the Court said, “in exercise of powers conferred under Article142 of the Constitution, we direct that from the date when the Act of 2015 came into force, all children who have committed offences falling in the 4th category shall be dealt with in the same manner as children who have committed ‘serious offences’… Our directions shall continue to remain in force only till such action is taken.”
The Bench also directed the deletion of the name of the child from the copy of the High Court judgment, in tune with Section 74 of the JJ Act of 2015.
— India Legal Bureau