The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015

What it does

The Act deals with two groups of children. A child in conflict with the law is a child alleged or found to have committed an offence, and the Act sends the case to a Juvenile Justice Board and not to the ordinary criminal courts. A child in need of care and protection is dealt with by a Child Welfare Committee, which decides on the child's care, rehabilitation and restoration to family. The Act also contains the law on adoption, administered with the Central Adoption Resource Authority.

The Act came into force on 15 January 2016 and replaced the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000. It treats the child's best interest as the governing principle, and it provides for institutional care in homes that must be registered.

Who it binds

A child is a person who has not completed eighteen years of age. The Board, the Committee, the police, the institutions that care for children and the court that hears an appeal are all bound by it. Police must deal with a child through a special juvenile police unit or a designated officer, and cannot place the child in a police lock-up or a jail.

What has changed, and when

The Act introduced a category of heinous offences, which are offences with a minimum punishment of seven years or more, and a provision under which a child between sixteen and eighteen alleged to have committed a heinous offence may be tried as an adult. The Board first makes a preliminary assessment of the child's mental and physical capacity to commit the offence and understanding of its consequences, and may then transfer the case to the Children's Court. Offences are otherwise graded as petty, serious and heinous, and the grade decides the procedure.

An amending Act of 2021 moved the power to make adoption orders from the court to the District Magistrate and gave District Magistrates a wider role in supervising child protection bodies. The Act's rule on bail is also worth stating. A child is to be released on bail unless there are reasonable grounds to believe that release would bring the child into association with a known criminal or expose the child to moral, physical or psychological danger, or defeat the ends of justice.

What turns on it in practice

The site names the Act in its note on criminal and sensitive litigation in India. Where the person arrested is, or may be, under eighteen, the age is the threshold fact, and a claim of juvenility can be raised before any court at any stage. The documents that prove age are the school record and the birth certificate, and the Act provides for medical determination where those are not available. A dispute about age is often settled before the merits are reached.

Three questions recur. What the age of the person was on the date of the offence, and not on the date of arrest or trial, since the Act looks to the child's age at the time of the offence. Whether the offence is petty, serious or heinous, and so whether the preliminary assessment arises. And whether the police and the Board followed the procedure the Act requires, since a departure from it, such as keeping the child in an adult lock-up, is itself a ground of complaint.

The Act sits beside the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 and the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, which define the offence and the general procedure, and the Act's own provisions displace those for a child.