On Saturday, the civil society in Kashmir held a candlelight sit-in for the amendment in juvenile justice law and sought an end to juvenile detentions in Kashmir.  Significantly, the sit-in was attended by the senior Supreme Court advocate and the founder director of Human Rights Law Network, Colin Gonsalvez. The immediate issue before the participants was the recent arrest of 12 year old Faizan of Safakadal for stone throwing. The boy was booked under harsh sections of Ranbir Penal Code and CrPC. Even though Faizan has since been let out on bail, his case has reignited the debate about the trend of juvenile detentions in Valley. After all, Faizan is not the first minor to be arrested in the state over the past five years. In 2010, the government slapped the Public Safety Act against eight stone-pelters, all between 15 and 18 years old. Not only that, these minors were detained with adults in prisons and tried as adults in normal courts. In some cases, the government also invoked section 121 of CrPC, which deals with a serious offense of waging war against the state. These boys were allegedly involved in stone-throwing at the security forces. But while official quarters at the time rationalized the action as an extraordinary response to an extraordinary situation, the arrest of Faizan has underlined that the detention of minors in the state is not an exception but the rule.  As the human rights groups have now highlighted, this is an abnormal situation.  A 12 year old cannot be booked for waging war against the country for holding a stone in hand. This calls for an urgent overhaul in the J&K Juvenile Justice Act under which only the boys under 16 years old are minors while as under central law the age of a juvenile is 18. There is also the need to check the tendency to slap harsh sections of RPC and CrPC on the minors and that too at a time when there is nothing in the prevailing situation that warrants such response. One only hopes that the government heeds the growing public resentment about the juvenile detentions and acts to improve the record

Lastupdate on : Sun, 2 Sep 2012 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Sun, 2 Sep 2012 18:30:00 GMT
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