Mangaluru: Karnataka High Court Chief Justice D.H Waghela on Saturday stressed the importance of reformative juvenile justice and not punishing the child, which has violated the laws.
He was speaking after inaugurating the workshop on ‘Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000’, organized in collaboration with various organizations here in the city.
Mr. Waghela said that there are ‘special provisions’ made in the Juvenile Justice Act, which stress on ‘reversing the mind of the child from the wrong path’ and not sending it to the jail. “When a child makes mistakes at home, we do not punish it severely. Similarly, we do not send the child to the jail to rot with hardcore criminals. Children are the future of our country. We owe a lot to the next generation”, he said.
He also mentioned that during the British rule, the Indian Penal Code (IPC) was framed to crush the thinking mind of citizens with oppressive laws and not for the purpose of social justice. “India took 50 years after Independence, to pass the Juvenile Justice Act and many more years to effectively implement it”, Mr. Waghela added.
The Chief Justice said that the television, internet and mobile phones have influence on the mind of the child. The habit of reading has declined among the children. Hence, it’s hard to predict the mind of the child. The young mind is in dilemma up to the age of 25, he said adding that the body of child is not controlled my mind but the body controls the mind.
In his presidential address, Justice Hulvadi G. Ramesh, judge of Karnataka High Court said that the whole idea behind Juvenile Justice Act is to bring the child back to the mainstream, with reformative measures – which is in place at the observation centres. Besides, every police station has a separate unit to treat children with humane approach”, he said.
Superintendent of Police (SP) Dr. Sharanappa said that the police enquire into cases related to juvenile delinquency with civil dress and not in the uniforms. We focus on corrective measures and not punishing the child”, he said.
High Court judge S. Abdul Nazeer, A.N Venugopala Gowda, Karnataka Bar Council chairman P.P Hegde, Deputy Commissioner A.B Ibrahim, Zilla Panchayat CEO Tulsi Maddineni, D.K District court judge Uma M.G were among others present on the dais.
