Delhi High Court: Chander Shekhar, J. refused to interfere with the order of the Juvenile Justice Board whereby it had directed that the two children in conflict with the law in the present cause shall not be treated as adults.
The petitioner was the father of the deceased, Mandeep. An FIR was registered under Sections 363, 302, 201 and 34 IPC in connection with Mandeep’s murder. After going through the material on record including the preliminary assessment reports prepared b experts, the JJ Board passed the order to treat the children in conflict with law as children and were ordered to be tried before the JJ Board as children. The petitioner challenged the order of the JJ Board, but the Additional Sessions Judge upheld the order. Aggrieved thereby, the petitioner filed the present revision petition.
Perusing the record, as well as relevant sections the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, the High Court was of the view that order of the JJ Board did not require interference. Discussing Section 15 and the proviso thereto, the court observed: “There is no doubt that the JJ Board may seek the opinion of an expert regarding the mental and physical capacity of CCL to commit an offence and it is not necessary that if an expert opined that the mental and physical capacity of CCL and his ability to understand the consequence of the offence are positive, then the JJ Board is bound by the expert opinion. It is well within the jurisdiction of the JJ Board to agree or disagree with the preliminary assessment report of the CCL submitted by such a psychologist to the JJ Board.” Having regard to the facts of the present case, it was held that the JJ Board had applied its mind before coming to the conclusion that the two children in conflict shall not be treated as adults. In such view of the matter, the petition was dismissed.[Pradeep Kumar v. State (NCT of Delhi), 2019 SCC OnLine Del 8251, decided on 15-04-2019]
