JJBs To Review Child In Conflict With Law's Progress, Ensure Post-Release Plans": Delhi High Court Issues Slew Of Orders

The Delhi High Court the other week approved plenty of directions to the Juvenile Justice Boards as well as the Delhi Government for standardising the functioning of the juvenile justice delivery system under the Act and Juvenile Justice Rules, 2016, keeping in mind the importance of reformation, rehabilitation, and social inclusion of a juvenile delinquency child within the scheme of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015. The orders were given by a bench consisting of Justice Siddharth Mridul and Justice Anup J Bhambhani.

The Court had established guidelines for expediting the process of investigating adolescents who had broken the law and ensuring that all agencies followed them to the letter. It had ordered that all cases alleging petty offences against children or juveniles in violation of the law, where the inquiry has been pending and remains inconclusive for more than one year, be terminated with immediate impact, regardless of whether such child or juvenile has been brought before the Juvenile Justice Boards in Delhi. The long-pending cases were attributed to the epidemic, in which children were not brought before the JJ Boards. Stakeholders were under the impression that the four-month period set forth in section 14 would begin to run only after the kid was first produced before the JJB. However, hundreds of cases involving petty crimes have been stagnating at various stages for considerably longer.