Karnataka - Mangalore   

Little importance given to child rights in country

MANGALORE: India is home to one-fifth of the world’s children, according to a recent report of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Over 39 crore or a whopping 40 per cent of the country’s population are children below the age of 14, according to the Population Research Bureau.

Yet, the Juvenile Justice Act, central to the care and protection of children in the country, is not deemed important enough to be taught to cadets at the Sardar Valabhbhai Patel National Police Academy, Hyderabad, which trains officers of the Indian Police Service.

IPS officer A.S. Rao, who passed out of the academy in 2002, first encountered the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act, 2000, in 2005. At that time, he had been posted as a young Assistant Superintendent of Police in charge of Puttur subdivision in Dakshina Kannada. “A minor girl was raped in 2005 and activist groups demanded to know if I had handled the case as per the JJ Act. Initially, I had no answer. It was then that I was compelled to quickly read the provisions of the Act,” he reminisces.

Mr. Rao, now the Superintendent of Police in the district, confirms that there is little knowledge of child rights lower down in the police hierarchy. Without a concerted Statewide training programme, the only initiation to the Act happens at the district level on an ad hoc basis to fill posts in the district’s Special Juvenile Police Unit (SJPU).

And the district SJPU, according to activists, does nothing beyond satisfying Section 63 of the JJ Act that calls for the formation of a trained police team to deal with children in distress or in conflict with the law.

CWC member Geo D’Silva points to a case that occurred in Belthangady on November 24 when the special Child Welfare Officer of the local police station, who is part of the SJPU, was refused permission by his senior officer to come to the aid of a distressed girl.

“The girl was destitute and in grave danger of being victimised. But we were flatly told that the special officer, as well as the rest of the police personnel, had been deputed for bandobast,” says Mr. D’Silva. Conceding that the police force in the district is unable to devote time to child rights, Mr. Rao says that the constitution of a specialised team can happen only at the State level.

“We have special teams to deal with narcotics, naxalism, terrorism and corruption. But we do not have a specialised police team to deal with child rights violations that occur every day,” laments advocate Aarti Mundkur, a former member of the Bangalore Juvenile Justice Board. “Unfortunately, there is always something more important than child rights,” she says.

The ignorance of the JJ Act’s provisions is, however, not restricted to the Police Department. Officials of other government departments, particularly the Women and Child Welfare Department, have on several occasions tried to undermine the Child Welfare Committee in the district.

Section 29 (5) of the Act states that “The Child Welfare Committee shall function as a Bench of Magistrates and shall have the powers conferred on a Metropolitan Magistrate or a Magistrate of the First Class.”

Section 31 also says that the CWC shall have the final authority to dispose of cases for the care, protection, treatment, development and rehabilitation of children in distress. It provides the CWC with exclusive powers to dispose of cases under the Act, which entrusts the CWC with suo motu powers.

However, the Women and Child Welfare Department has, on several occasions, interfered with the working of the CWC by questioning them when its members exercise the powers vested in them by the Act.

Mr. D’Silva says, “In 2007, we convicted some persons accused of raping a minor girl under Section 23 of the Act. Immediately, the department sent us a memo asking who gave us the authority to convict people, although we had worked well within the law.”

The same year, a journalist was convicted by the CWC for employing an eight-year-old girl whom he had bought for Rs. 50. “Again, we were asked to explain ourselves because the convict alleged that we had trespassed into his house, whereas we have been given all the rights to rescue a child in distress by taking suo motu cognisance under Section 27 of the model rules of the Act,” he explains. The journalist was later convicted by a court in Tamil Nadu and he continues to be in jail.

Mr. D’Silva says, “We are a judicial body and need not be answerable to any government executive.” Quoting a recent exchange, where the authorities raised similar questions of propriety and jurisdiction, he says, “We asked them to buy a copy of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act, 2000 that is readily available in the market.”

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