Delineating Juvenile Delinquency: Ambiguous Categorization Of Offences

Mayank Dwivedi, Lloyd Law College

ABSTRACT

A child being the most sensitive and vulnerable part of the society needs utmost care and affection in social as well as personal aspects. Juvenile being of immature age has slighter exposure to the real world and this is the reason that they get influenced by external factors for their behavioural changes and character building. Legislatures hence developed Juvenile Justice System for delinquent juveniles. This system evolved and adopted worldly changes with time and eras. From year 1986 to current times, Indian laws and legal system worked and enhanced their approach to juvenile delinquency. According to International law, a ‘Child’ or ‘Juvenile’ is that person who has not yet completed the age of eighteen years. Indian laws decided to call a person ‘Juvenile’, if it is a boy with less than sixteen years of age and a girl with below eighteen years of age. Taking into consideration various amendments regarding lowering down the age for juvenile in case of heinous offences clears the intention of judiciary and legislature of intolerance against sinful and higher degree of criminal offences in order to protect the society from any evil harm. And in such heinous cases, juveniles shall also be tried as adult. But in order to execute such actions, legislatures needed to clearly define the boundaries of categories of various offences, which legislature failed and resulted in creating a new muddle and chaos. Ambiguous categorization of offences into petty, serious and heinous offences were the sole reason behind this confusion against which, with intention to clear the ambiguity, judiciary in various cases examined the legislative intent and settled and clarified the specific definition for each category of offence in Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015.