Protection of Child Rights
While expressing pain over the way a session's court dealt with a murder case in which a juvenile was "incarcer¬ated" for over nine years, the Delhi High Court said that Rights of children are completely non-negotiable even if they are implicated in a heinous crime. The court suggested that there was a need to train trial court judges regarding the law relating to juveniles and also said that the sessions court had dealt with the matter while being "completely oblivious" of the valuable rights of a minor under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act.
Acquitting the minor boy forthwith, the court directed the High Court registry to send the copy of its order to Director (Academics) of Delhi Judicial Academy for designing refresher course on juvenile justice and compiling the material for it and said that design shall be sent to every District Judge, who, if possible, would organise and implement the training at the district court complexes for expedi¬ency and to save the time of judges. The timing of implementation, of the training may be Staggered to ensure that the programme is under taken urgently avd by every member of the judicial services.
Law Commission Report: Mean¬while, the 21st Law Commission in its first report recommended a series of changes in the draft Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction Bill-2016, proposed by the Women and Child Development Ministry, including one-year jail term for wrongful retention or removal of a child from the custody of a parent.
The offenders may include one of the parents or family, relatives and others.The Commission has, in its revised "The Protection of Children (Inter-Country Removal and Retention) Bill, 2016", also recommended three months' punishment for willful misrepresentation or conceal¬ment of fact as regards the location or information about the child or for voluntar¬ily preventing the safe return of the child.
The principles of best interest of the child can be found in the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the
Child 1989 which came into force on September 2, 1990 and the preamble and the object of the Hague convention 1980.
The Commission quoted a Punjab and Haryana High Court judgment (Feb¬ruary 2016) referring the matter to the Law Commission "to examine mul,tiple issues involved in inter-country, inter-parental child removal amongst families and thereafter to consider whether recommendations should be made for enacting a suitable law for signing the Hague Convention on Child Abduction.
