In October 2021, a court in Rajasthan sentenced a man to 20 years imprisonment for raping a 9 year old girl. This case made it to the news because of the exceptional speed of challan to conviction.

It’s been a few months since I began to observe the juvenile justice system in Delhi. I have many resulting questions from the perspective of a legal professional and a fellow human being. 

In September this year, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) published its annual ‘Crime in India’ report providing statistics on crimes committed in India in 2020. In the last three years, according to its data, 418,385 crimes against children were recorded.

Early this year, a horrifying incident was reported from Guna district in Madhya Pradesh where labourers were made to pick coins out of hot oil as punishment when they spilled some liquid jaggery that they were preparing.

Three incidents occurred in the Indian capital city of Delhi recently, within days of each other, which involved complex questions on how the criminal justice system, particularly the regime to protect children from sexual offences, intersects with caste oppression.

I recall that the juvenile status of a person accused of committing crime became a talking point after the Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case, a gruesome crime that shook the country in 2012.