Two days ago, on 22 December 2015, the Rajya Sabha passed a new Juvenile Justice Bill that effectively lowered the age of juveniles accused of heinous crimes from 18 to 16 years. The decision followed on the heels of the Supreme Court of India’s decision to turn down the petition filed by the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) seeking an extension of the period of juvenile accused of the rape of Jyoti Singh on December 2012. The Supreme Court’s decision to set him free was based on the current provisions of the juvenile justice law. Indirectly blaming Parliament for not having expedited the passage of amendments to the juvenile justice act, which lowers the defining age for juveniles to 16 years, the court asked: “Under what jurisdiction can we extend his detention?”
The pending release of the juvenile sparked heated debate in the nation, which many believe affected the decision of the Rajya Sabha. At the heart of this public discourse was a key conflict: a fight between the notion of retribution versus the idea of reformation—the possibility of a person changing over time. To deny a criminal the opportunity to reform himself, especially since he was below the officially defined threshold of adulthood at the time he committed the crime, is surely a mark of retributive justice. In the case of a brutal rape such as this, however, is justice served by merely adhering to the letter of the law?
It is pertinent to remember that the juvenile rapist was just six months shy of reaching adulthood at the time he committed the crime. Now 21 years old, his criminal record has been effaced from official records, and he is set to have a new “reformed” identity. In the aftermath of the juvenile’s release, Jyoti’s distraught mother Asha Singh blamed the political class for not doing right by her daughter. “My daughter’s name was Jyoti Singh…I am taking her name today and so should all of you…I feel angry, not ashamed,” she said. Two contrasting images—Jyoti’s mother breaking down in front of the camera, and the juvenile perpetrator walking away with a cloth covering his face—underlined the contrary tensions in the case, and signalled a kind of role reversal. As the victim’s family reclaimed their loved one’s identity, the perpetrator hid his. The juvenile will perhaps fear for his safety once he is out on the streets or at home in his village in Badaun, but fear is not a substitute for shame, nor is it penitence for the crime he committed. But remorse, too, is not guaranteed by justice. After it ran into fierce protests from the government and sections of activists and intellectuals, British filmmaker Leslee Udwin’s 2015 BBC Storyville documentary, India’s Daughter, which was based on the December 16 incident, was not allowed to be screened in the country. But those who watched the film would recall the chilling words of Mukesh, one of the convicted rapists. Staring into the camera, he said: “A girl is far more responsible for her rape than a boy.”
COMMENT