Amid the national uproar over the May 19 road accident involving a Porsche car driven by a 17-year-old boy in which two young software engineers were killed in Pune, the Juvenile Justice Board on May 22 cancelled the minor’s bail and sent him to a rehabilitation home till June 5. Earlier, the Juvenile Justice Board granted the boy bail within 14 hours of the incident as it did not find the crime “serious” enough to deny bail. Besides directing him to visit the Regional Transport Office and study all the rules and regulations, and submit a presentation to the Board within 15 days, it also asked him to write an essay of 300 words on the topic of road accidents and their solutions.
The Juvenile Justice Board’s decision to grant the youngster bail on the same day while asking him to write an essay on road accidents drew massive criticism and debate. Due to the public outrage in the case, the Pune Police were forced to approach the Juvenile Justice Board for review of its previous order which granted bail to the accused, who is a minor in this case. The police moved a review plea before the Board under Section 104 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act seeking that the minor be tried as an adult as he committed a heinous crime. The CCTV footage of the bar clearly shows that the juvenile consumed alcohol in a local pub before driving the car.
The question that is being raised is whether the juvenile can be tried as an adult. The National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has established specific guidelines for the Juvenile Justice Board to follow when conducting an initial assessment under Section 15 of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015. The purpose of the preliminary assessment is to ascertain whether the minor is capable of undergoing trial as an adult. According to the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, a child is defined as a person who has yet not touched the age of 18 years. It also said that a juvenile between the ages of 16 to 18 years, who is indulgent in grave crimes, can be tried as an adult.
The Juvenile Justice Act also mandates that the Juvenile Justice Board conducts preliminary assessment of the child’s mental and physical capacity to commit a serious crime. There are two important conditions necessitating a preliminary assessment – that the crime falls under the Act’s classification of heinous crimes, and the juvenile has to be in between the age of 16 and 18 years. In the Porsche accident case, the accused is 17 years of age. According to the Section 2 (33) of the Juvenile Justice Act 2015, ‘heinous offences’ are those crimes for which there is a minimum punishment of seven years imprisonment or more in the Indian Penal Code or any other law.
