‘Need stronger juvenile justice’

Chief Justice of India Altamas Kabir on Sunday called for the need of strengthening the juvenile justice system. He said the country could face chaos if it does not provide adequate protection and care to children in conflict with law.
The CJI voiced the concern at a Conference of Chief Ministers and Chief Justices of High Courts that despite 42 per cent of population comprising children not much has been achieved for them and many face the problem of drug addiction.
“More than one-third of population, large number of them children, do not have proper facilities despite best of our efforts and intention. This leads to number of problems and drug addiction is the worst problem there is. To address these, we have to strengthen the juvenile justice system,” the CJI said.
He said juvenile justice system was the result of great deal of thinking by nations across the world and has to be implemented in letter and spirit.
The CJI said the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act deals with protection and care of children who are in conflict with law and are generally not from the elite society.
“We have children with good education, they are from elite class but what about the rest,” he said.
“These are areas which we often need to sit and discuss,” Justice Kabir said while elaborating that there was a need for executive, judiciary and police administration to work together to effectively implement law.
Meanwhile, speaking at the occasion law and justice minister Ashwani Kumar stressed on the need to strengthen the lower judiciary and pointed out that a majority of the people were still outside the protective umbrella of the law.
He said that while the Centre was willing to fund the process of strengthening subordinate judiciary, the state governments will also have to pitch in with their efforts.
“I must confess that our judicial system is under strain with more than three crore cases pending in various courts. The goal of affordable and expeditious justice for the common man is still a distant dream,” Mr Kumar said.