Maneka Gandhi has suggested amending the law to try juveniles as adults in cases of rape, murder and other heinous crimes. AIDWA opposes this and holds that tampering with the cut off age of 18 years in the juvenile justice act is not such a simple and one-dimensional issue as is being made out. It is true that there are many reports of extremely gruesome and horrific incidents of gang rape and murder involving juvenile perpetrators in the age group of 16-18 years. The December 16 Delhi gang rape case or the serial rapes of two young women in Mumbai’s Shakti Mills are two chilling examples of the impunity and aggression of the juvenile convicts. Surely, for the rape victim/survivor, the age of the criminal cannot mitigate the horror of her suffering.
But can such cases, howsoever abhorrent, justify changing the law for all juveniles? There are several reasons why AIDWA considers this to be a knee jerk and ill-conceived response by the Minister. For one thing, Maneka Gandhi’s reading of the crime data is incorrect because many cases of “rape” in the 16-18 age group may in fact be cases of consensual relationships between young couples and therefore decreed as “statutory” rape rather than forced and non-consensual acts. Unless the data is disaggregated by “consent”, it is difficult to read much into the reported spike in rape cases involving boys in the 16-18 years category.
This issue has got even complicated after the criminal law amendment, which raised the age of consent from 16 to 18 years. Section 375 defines statutory rape as rape of a complainant under 18 years of age. However, taking note of the social reality that there are many instances of consensual sexual activity between young girls above 16 years of age and young boys and that it would lead to injustice if these young boys were prosecuted for rape, we had suggested an amendment by way of a proviso to clause ‘sixthly’ to exempt such consensual activity from the purview of statutory rape provided the accused person is not more than 5 years older.
Another important consideration is that punishment cannot be based on vindictiveness or revenge, and must entail the possibility of reform and correction. This applies even more for young adolescents and throwing them into prisons with hardcore criminals puts paid to any possibility of reform. To treat them at par with fully formed adults, which is what putting the nature of crime ahead of age does, is to ascribe an agency in decision making that does not really exist.
Therefore, while it is true that cases like the 16th December Delhi case or the Shakti Mill serial gang rapes do and must shake our collective conscience and lead to an in-depth review in the criminal justice system, changing the definition of juvenile is not the direction in which to go. AIDWA urges Maneka Gandhi to revisit and implement some of the important recommendations of the Verma Committee that were ignored or diluted by the previous Government.
