Juveniles in justice system

From Indias largest newsroom, I'm Arun George and this is the Times of India podcast. Just a warning. Today's episode deals with themes of online sexual abuse and abuse. If you know a child who has faced online sexual abuse, you can call the Merry Trust Line on 636-317-6363. I'll repeat that it's 636-317-6363. Two cases have recently brought the spotlight on those under the age of 18 when they're accused

in criminal cases. The 1st and the one that's made more headlines is the Pune case where the son of a builder resulted in the death of two people while driving a sports car. The 2nd is the case of an Uttarakhand teen who was put in an observation home after a girl he knew committed suicide because he had shared explicit videos of her. In today's episode, we're looking at both cases in terms of what is the way forward in dealing with children who find themselves facing the criminal

justice system. My colleague Ambika Pandit at The Times of India spoke with experts to examine the issues with having children accused of crimes being treated as adult criminals and punished accordingly. She also examines online abuse involving teenagers and what the problems are with how we, the adults, deal with such cases. She also looked at whether teenagers accused in such cases are beyond redemption. That is, they're destined for a life of crime. But first, the Uttarakhand case.

The Uttarakhand case made headlines after the Supreme Court went against the norm of granting bail to juveniles in retention. The boy in this case had allegedly circulated obscene videos of his classmate, a 14 year old girl, which her father said drove her to die by suicide. The boys plea for bail was rejected by a juvenile justice board and the Uttarakhand High Court. The Supreme Court also rejected his plea, seeking that he be released from a reform home and

into his mother's custody. The High Court had rejected his release on the ground that he was an undisciplined child keeping bad company and that he required disciplining. One of our guests on today's episode doesn't agree with this order. What worries me is the reasoning behind the bail sort of not being given to the juvenile in the Uttarakhand case. In the Uttarakhand case, I read the judgment and I think the court takes an extremely

parental stance. And I think it's sort of like the same reason, like, why a lot of parents who corporally sort of punish a child give, you know, this sort of punishment will improve the child's behaviour. And I think the reasons given are not extremely viable. And I think the court is sort of taking a very parental stance and not looking at it in terms of how is this materially going to affect the case, right. The court cites such sort of things as the boy will fall into bad behaviour.

He has behaved previously like, you know, badly in school. I'm not here to issue like a character certificate on like the child in conflict with the law. But I don't think these are sufficient grounds to deny bail to like a 15 year old. There can be cases where bail can be denied, but I don't think those conditions are being met. That's Siddharth Pillai who's the Co founder and director at the Rights Action Technology Inclusion or Rathi Foundation.

The Mumbai based organization works to address the issue of violence against children and women online and its effects offline. The RATI Foundation also runs a helpline called the Merry Trust Line that helps children facing online harm. That's the number we dread out. At the start of today's episode, Sinak Pillai tells Ambika Pandit that one big problem in such cases is that most victims of online sexual abuse struggle to talk about the incidents even on

an anonymous helpline. Because of the shame associated, they find it very difficult to share, right? So our helpline, basically we take cases of cyberbullying, which may not involve sexual content and cases of intimate content that has been released or threatened to be released without consent, which is in this case.

So even when a victim who's reaching out for intimate content, they introduce as themselves as oh, I'm suffering from cyberbullying, unless you sort of like build a rappo, the victim will not be able to disclose or, you know, Wiz be hesitant to disclose that Oh, my content has been leaked. And I do think that, like, you know, other systems that the victim could reach out, they do have a trust deficit.

Siddharth says that in such cases, the child who may have shared explicit material first has to reveal to an adult that they have shared such photos or videos. Then they have to face the blame or may be shamed by various adults they seek help from, including possibly their parents

or the police. And all this happens while they are dealing with the threat that the photos or videos are being widely shared on the Internet. When the victim calls her counselor, she constantly tells her counselor, I am sorry, I am sorry. So a large part of what a counselor does is convince the victim that see, what you did is perhaps like, you know, like normal for your age, right? You sent across an intimate photograph and not all of them will be completely nudes as well, right?

So we will tell them you sent across an intimate photograph and it's not your fault. So I think from the victim's perspective, one of the things that really drives their emotional upheaval and why they feel stressed is because they

feel it is their fault. I would like you to also tell us about what happens in this case, you know, with the accused, because he's also turning into this bully now who's not just indulging in the crime but is also now trying to remove the victim away from being a complainant and whatnot. Most cases, victims are girls and the perpetrators are boys. And in many of our cases they have maybe a previous relationship or they have got into a relationship online,

right? So I think girls are aware that if you send content, it may be stored on his phone, it may be used to leak. So that guard is extremely up even in like high profile cases, like you know, like you can see the Prajwal Revana case, right? It's mostly a screen recording. So what victims will consent to is like, I won't send you anything permanent on your phone because they are aware that this is an issue, but I'm still in love with you. I may have a relationship with you.

So let's get on a video call or I will send you a one time message. Or like, you know, they take a promise that the content will be deleted. But what the perpetrator does is that they don't keep this promise and they break this promise. It's also a power dynamic that once I have someone's photograph, if I need them to do anything, I can give them the dum key of, you know, I will leak your photograph, Meet me today in the evening. Girl refuses.

I'll say, OK, I'm gonna release your photograph, right? And then that power dynamic is established and then it slides progressively into abuse. So in most cases, one of the threats is that if you tell anyone, I'll leak, and then there is a demand that if you don't want me to leak, send me more content. And then again, it goes back to if you tell anyone you leak. So then you entrap the victim in the cycle of isolation and cycle of abuse.

And then it becomes extremely difficult for the victim to break it, you know, because now there is much more content than before. So in this manner, it's very similar to how financial fraud is, right? Like you get blackmailed, you send something, then they blackmail you again. How many minors do you get on both sides? Or is it mostly a grown up adult abusing a young victim? What is the age profile? Do we see a lot of minors involved in this?

In the developmental sense, right, You get into a risk taking age like, you know, you know, I'm going to get into trouble, but I'll still do this, right? It can be like smoking or like doing a stunt on bikes, but you will still do it. So that is your risk taking age where your brain is still developing very clearly. Our data shows that children between the age of 13 and up to like, you know, young people till the age of 25 are the majority of our cases, you know, 85%.

And I know like legally this becomes a bit weird because those under 18 are regarded as children and 19 to 25 will be regarded as young adults or perhaps adults. Now, if you look at only 18, under 1830% of our cases have minor victims. And if you look at like perpetrators once again, like you know, around 25 to 30% are minor perpetrators, right? Most of the perpetrators are known to the victims. Like I think also in the Uttarakhand case, right, they are in their immediate

neighbourhood. So in terms of like the profile of perpetrators, like let's say about only 48% are strangers. So people they've met online and 52% are known individuals. Mostly they are ex partners. See that Pillai says that in most cases involving teenage boys, it's mostly entrapment in sexual extortion cases. Those are the sort of cases widely prevalent right now and involve morph videos, messages and calls on chat apps like WhatsApp and others.

There's an international research that young boys get groomed within 20 seconds. And we thought it was like, you know, a slightly exaggerated research, but then we started getting screenshots, right? Like, so it's just like, are you sex interested? Are you sex interested three times and the boy has already got on a call. But for like to groom a girl or to fasao a girl, you first get into a relationship, then you demand the photographs.

So the process is longer. So I think in most of these relationship abuse cases, the victims are largely women and the perpetrators are boys. But in sextortion cases, which also involves child sexual abuse material, the victims are more boys, but the perpetrators are like organized criminals. Siddharth Pillai says that there are things we can do to make things easier for the victims of online sexual abuse.

He says the starting point is how police and online platforms hosting such videos react to complaints. We've had cases where the police is looking at the content in front of the girl, then the girl is expected to give a statement in front of that same police. The police has looked through her entire phone. So I think it's not very easy for the victim to even register a case. The police must be more friendly.

I think like, you know, the police, like in a lot of our cases, even when the victims approach the police stations, the cases are not taken on board, you know, because sometimes, like, you know, in online, it's like, oh, we don't know where the perpetrator is, so we will not register the case. Second, the biggest pain point is the content must come down, right? So who does it? So currently, it's vague.

A lot of people believe the police will issue content takedown orders, but the police does not do it. So there is a lack of communication from the police to the platforms as to like, you know, remove this content. Even the platforms need to do more, right? Like we've had a case of cyber bullying where the perpetrator kept making new accounts on the same platform for over a year.

So can the platform take like a bigger cognizance of the issue and ensure that this guy never makes it really challenging for him to make another account because just udawing our account means that guy makes another account and continues troubling the girl. But given that many of the cases targeting teenage girls involve boys of their own age, Sinaat Pillai says that we also need to be talking more with boys about

how to handle relationships. I think we need to 1st acknowledge that largely many of them are boys and I think there is a real failure. I think, and I don't want to sound like an older person, but there's a real failure in

handling breakups. You know, if somebody likes a girl or if somebody they just don't know how to approach and you know, they, they feel like, you know, coercing the girl or like, you know, using the girl to, you know, like entrapping the girl in abuse is a good way of like, you know, building intimacy with the girl. And I think these two points have been conflated. So it's a very toxic sort of scenario. So I think that whole that men connect and talking to the men and boys.

And I think even like, you know, the educational department has mentioned it needs to be done. And I think, you know, because sometimes when we get cases where the perpetrator are boys and we go to the police station, I think we do feel like, you know, bad that like, you know, like he's just 15, but he's done this horrible thing, you know, and can it be avoided? So I think that the boy should do better is also a feeling that

we experience right? Siddharth Pillai tells Ambika Pandit that while victims are very traumatized by such cases, even the teenage perpetrators who are caught in such cases see a massive upheaval in their lives. What happens when such an incident occurs is that it disrupts your entire life, right? It disrupts your education, it disrupts your family life. It disrupts your emotional life. It disrupts many aspects. It's not just this one issue. The effect spreads to all

corners of your life. And I'm sure when a perpetrator is caught and he's 14 year old, his education is disrupted, his emotional life is disrupted. Is there a way in which we can look at this comprehensive solution, rehabilitation or like, you know, reformation doesn't mean he will never do this again. It has to be like, you know, can he come out of this as a better individual? And whatever disruption and has occurred in his life, can we

solve for it? Because otherwise he has no chance of reforming If you only focus on one aspect. If you only take this minor and tell that like, you know, kalse tirko mobile nahi milega, you're never going to have access to mobile ever, right? I don't think that solves the issue. I really believe it's like a symptom of something as large as patriarchy and something as large as like, you know, not being able to handle his own

emotional sort of issues. And because we deal with a lot of cases and lot of cases involving exchange of content is the abuse and romantic relationships, right? So the boy has been kind to the girl before and now, like, you know, he's descended into this toxic type. So could he have made a better choice? So I think those things need to be examined. And I feel like sweeping judgments on like 14 year olds that affect other 14 year olds based on one case should be

avoided. You know Agana thuri B News follow karte hai to Pune Porsche murder case ke baare me abhi Tak to janhi guy honge. Is there any reason why this 17 year old eight-month boy should not be tried as an adult? He knew exactly what he was doing. The. Accused was initially booked. For only death. By negligence. Why was the police so? Negligent in filing that FIR.

Builder Vishal Agarwal son had allegedly gone out to party with his friends to two bars on the night of the 19th of May, where he was allegedly served alcohol despite being under the age of 18. After leaving one of the bars, he drove a sports car into a motorcycle and ended up killing the two riders, both of whom were adults and workers in the tech industry. He was initially charged under various sections of the law, including negligence and

culpable homicide. The miner was then taken for a blood test and produced before a juvenile justice board. He was granted bail within 15 hours of his arrest. He was told to work with Punes Yerwada traffic police for 15 days composer 300 word essay to undergo treatment for alcohol dependency and to submit a report after the treatment. But since his detention on the 20th of May, the role of adults in the case has been as problematic as the incident

itself. An NCP MLA from the Ajit Pawar faction is said to have delayed the teenagers blood test to ascertain the blood alcohol levels. The teenager's father and grandfather are accused of trying to get the family's driver to take the blame. His father was on the run and has since been arrested. Two doctors who collected the teenager's first blood sample have been arrested for disposing of the sample and preventing an accurate assessment of whether he was intoxicated at the time

of the accident. Criminal cases involving underage accused like in the Pune case often spark public outrage. Whether it is the recent Pune case or the Delhi gang rape case of 2012, there is public outrage over an UN aged accused dealing with juvenile justice boards instead of courts and jails. After the Delhi case, India modified the law to allow juveniles to face trial as adults in cases where crimes are deemed heinous.

In the Pune case, despite the police first sending the teenager to the Juvenile Justice Board, they have now said that they will attempt to ensure he faces trial as an adult. Geetanjali Prasad at the Azim Premji Foundation and has worked in the realm of juvenile justice, tells Ambika Pandit that the Pune police's actions aren't really a surprise.

In the context of this case, the first sort of relevant narrative that rears its head is this idea that the law is designed for young criminals to evade punishment and evade the rightful consequences of the law. Geetanjali Prasad says that since the change in the law, there's been a change in the intent of the law. In the Pune accident case, many adults acted to try and subvert

the full extent of the law. However, in the case of poorer children who have little family or institutional support, this change in the law works against them. The law was changed in 2015 after the Nirbhaya rape case, where there was a complete reversal, as it were, of juvenile justice law, where the law now says that children between 16 and 18 can be tried as adults after completing what is known as a preliminary assessment under Section 15 of

the ACT. And what becomes relevant here in the experience of anyone who has engaged with the JJ system as a lawyer, as a social worker, as a child who goes through the system, as their family, they will see that despite constitutional safeguards and despite procedural safeguards, the law does not treat children equally. There's a very beautiful section of the the JJ Act that contains

the principles of the ACT. And there is a principle that covers this idea of equality and non discrimination based on caste, class, background, disability. And it calls for equal access to opportunity and treatment under the JJ law. But you know, like with any other laws pertaining to the criminal justice system, whether we're speaking about adults that go through it or children, there is an inequality in how people are treated. And so, you know, this is coming out in different ways.

You are understanding the you're getting a glimpse of the the social economic power that this family has because then our reports of alleged coercion of the family's driver to take responsibility for this accident. And that has come out in the media and the police is investigating it. So I think just as far as context goes, it's really important to remember that different children are treated differently under this law.

Geetanjali Prasad said that in the Pune case, the Juvenile Justice Board, while roundly criticized in the public domain for its seemingly lenient punishment, was actually acting as per the law. The case filed by the police was not under a section of law that could be classified as a heinous offense. But while the Pune teenager was

set free by the board. Geeta Anjali tells the case of another teenager she worked on who was charged with the same sections of law as the Pune teenager but faced a fast Richter punishment. This was a case of a boy who we met in Dasna district jail in Ghaziabad in 2015 and at that point the boy had already spent four years in prison. He was charged under exactly the same section.

He was apprehended by the railway police for the death of a person who had fallen out of a train when a crowd was gathered at the door of the train. This boy worked as a vendor on the train and he had grown up on trains. You can ask him about any train that passes through any of the stations across the state of Uttar Pradesh. He'll be able to tell you the timings. He'll be able to tell you where they run to and from. He remembers all of this like the back of his hand.

And. He was brought to our attention not because there was some great concern around this idea of minors possibly being in jail, but because he had mental illness and he had been diagnosed by the mental hospital in Banaras. He had been sent there for treatment, had real extremes of emotion and so was clearly, you know, a nuisance in the prison. And that's why his case was

brought to our attention. The police official had said to him, I know you're a child, but if you go through the DJ system, you'll be stuck there for many years. Just go to jail, and you will get out on bail as quickly as possible. You know, just tell them you're a child and you'll get out of jail. But he had been there for four years, and he had no family that

was concerned about him. We made a family visit to his home in Pratapgarh and we learned that his brothers were trying to take over his part of the land that had been left to him by their father. And so they had no interest in getting him out and he had left home because of the discrimination he faced from his older brothers. In looking at this case, he finally gets out. He's finally free. We asked for a bone ossification

test to be done. The sessions judge is still not willing to transfer the case to the JJB. So this is an example of differential treatment. There isn't the security net of a family and certainly the state has no concern for a child like this other than if he or she creates a nuisance in whatever institution he is in and then there's some movement around it. There are certain safeguards created, including how the preliminary assessment should

take place under the new law. But there have to be enough procedural safeguards and rules built in that ensure that children from poor families or children who are marginalized by by way of their caste or class or religion are treated equally by the law. Monica Kumar is the Co founder and a clinical psychologist with the Manas Foundation, which works with teenagers and children who are accused in

criminal cases. She tells Ambika Pandit that a big problem with the system as it stands is that there's too little focus on preventive programs that speak to teenagers and young adults. The whole system is geared for redressal the moment something happens. If a police comes to us late in the night and says OK, there has been a rape victim and you do the counseling or this is the juveniles who has committed a hideous crime, what do you do at

that time the person is close. Disclosure is very difficult. We are a system of silence, but the effort towards preventive work, which is, you know, the conversations about gender, the conversations about what we need to do as young people, what as parents we need to do, what is society we need to do, so that preventive work is, I think completely missing. And we are again every time addressing this.

Monika Kumar says another issue with juveniles facing cases is that regular counseling just isn't enough. Within the reform homes we are of course looking at long term engagement, we are looking at workshops, we are looking at working with them. In reform homes simple counselling doesn't work. So you need other kinds of, you know, whether it is a career counselling, whether it is them doing any kind of work which gives them some kind of a piece

or some kind of engagement. So well we are suggesting all this. The question is that has your counselling yielded any result? The person's behaviour is the same, so I have no answers for that because it requires patience. It requires a change not only in the person, but in the system. So what I've understood, Monica, is the fact that what you're saying is that consistency as of

now is lacking prevention. When we talk, instead of qualitative, we are looking at quantitative results, which you feel should not be the way to look at it, but it should be an ongoing process where the counseling should be made a primary factor in the entire healing process. Is that right? Is that what you're trying to say? That's what I'm trying to say.

So don't start on a knee jerk reaction every time there is a case and when it gets over we forget and we go back to because we have so many files to deal with, so many things to answer to so many other things. And mental health is just a priority on a paper which is not really how it should be. I mean it should be made as a holistic intervention which is a plug in intervention to all other critical interventions which are happening and not just whenever there is a crisis.

Another popular perception with juveniles in conflict with the law is the belief that they are destined for a life of crime and there's no scope for reformation. Monica Kumar, who has worked with many teenagers in observation homes, says that's not the case. As a mental health professional, you know, we know that anybody who comes with conduct or personality issues or where there has been a serious crime, it's a long term work and

everybody has a right to reform. It's not just with one person. And you know, you don't see the change just in one person. But let's say that you reach out to 102 will change and who are we to label this as somebody who's not ready? And sometimes, you know, you keep working and the day comes. It's like with the autistic child now you start teaching that child and there is no language. And one day you want to give up. And suddenly they're speaking the line. So do we wait for that line or

do we just give up? It's something that I won't give up on. And I feel that, you know, you have to hit the cord and you have to figure that person out. There is a human part of it that nobody has actually had the conversation with them. That person also is rejecting the system and we are rejecting him. So we need to come and understand and adapt to each

other and figure a way out. Geetanjali Prasad was part of a research project that found that close to 10,000 underage prisoners were moved from jails to juvenile homes between 2015 and 2021. This was because they were wrongly sent to jails and kept in custody with adults. Geetanjali says poorer children who face the criminal justice system are often clueless about what to do and don't even get

good lawyers appearing for them. She says that many lawyers don't want to represent these children because they are poor and are seen as having no future. She says we need a system that's accountable to the children and to society at large. It is this idea of, you know, why should we fight for these kids? Which is not to say that legal aid doesn't exist. Legal aid exists. There are, you know, many legal aid lawyers in, especially in metros that are now working on some of these matters.

But is it a system that has, you know, where people are willing to fight with principles of legal aid and justice that are confrontational, you know, that will demand of the system that it is equally accountable to all children? That is what remains to be seen. That is the larger vision of what legal aid should be, not a meek system that just does what's easy, but a system that pushes the law to, you know, work in its best possible way for the rehabilitation and

reform of all children. But how does all of this connect to the Pune case? What connects the case of an economically backward teen accused of pushing someone off a train and wrongly sent to a jail to build a son whose family did everything possible to get him off the hook? Geetanjali Prasad says one needs to look at the idea behind the juvenile justice law. She says the Pune case should open our eyes to the problems that lie within the juvenile

justice system. It was put forth with this idea that juveniles committing crime happens because of harsh socio economic realities. And that therefore, you know, based on the fact that these children don't have an environment that is supporting them to be responsible, take decisions maturely, you have to have a situation that gives them a law that gives them the chance for rehabilitation.

And my point on this is just here you see inequality acting out in the system to use the best parts of this act in an exceptional case, in a preferential manner, right? And that's what I find very, very egregious about it. I think the fact that the juvenile was given bail immediately is again, another question. The mother of of the person killed is saying it's taken over 50 hours for me to cremate my son, but it's taken, you know, under 15 hours for this juvenile to get out on, on bail.

So yes, certainly it it raises questions, I think not about whether the ACT in itself is good or not and and whether it should have harsher provisions. Certainly, I don't think it should have harsher provisions if this incredibly high number of children, just as as one data point, are ending up in prisons when they shouldn't be, most of whom would not have committed heinous offences, right? They're just in for petty

offences. But but I think the more critical question it raises is about the inequality in accessing the criminal justice system, including the JJ system, and how people are allowed to use muscle power, money power for preferential ends. And if it hadn't been reported, then, you know, this kid could probably be out Scott free. So this is where the role of society citizens comes into play, that we all have to be concerned about these questions.

We all have to engage. It cannot be a momentary outrage when there's an exceptional case in the JJ system where a rich child is getting off easy. There has to be a constant engagement by civil society, by concerned citizens. It cannot be a knee jerk one time response in asking for accountability. That accountability should be asked for in every case that goes before JJ BS in this

country. And I know that's it's quite a leap to ask demand something like that, but that is what that is what a just system would look like. This outcome would never be allowed to happen if the same degree of care goes into every case that comes before JJ BS. And if every child has equal opportunity before the JJB, it

would never happen. Today's episode was produced by Jayaraj Singh and Sahil Gupta. For a daily spotlight on people, ideas and stories that matter, subscribe to us where available on the Times of India website, Spotify, Apple, Amazon or wherever else you get your podcasts. For any news, tips or feedback, mail me at arungeorge@timesgroup.com.