As if we did not have enough of hate crimes and lynch mobs in the country called Bharat, unknowingly or in a fit of uncontrolled anger even the media turns into a lynch mob specially on this day December 16.
If crimes are not going down even after five years , or going up as the headlines would have us believe some of the media hounds would have us believe that if the juvenile who had escaped death penalty, is hanged all the problems would be solved.
Like last year at this time reporters are busy tracking down the whereabouts of the minor who is living his new life as provided under the Constitution which is very unfair.
We all shudder to remember what the brutes did to Jyoti Singh (her parents always wanted her to be named) on that night when we all felt ashamed of being residents of Delhi. At least I did. On reading about her ordeal I had told my then editor of 'Sahara Time' Mayank Misra that I had felt the same pain and anger as I had felt when on a private visit to London in 1985 both Indians and Pakistanis (they don't fight there) told me they had seen videos of Sikhs being pulled out of trucks and burning tyres around their necks.And then the inevitable question' How could this happen in Delhi'.
Not that it is justified anywhere but having spent my childhood and college days and job in Delhi I had felt somewhat insulated from the happenings in remote places in the country where police presence and literacy was abysmally low.
I told them I had no answer as to how we had all turned boors in 1984 as in 2012. But the 2012 incident was vastly different. What happened to her on that cold night by the brutes brought about a sudden unity among the youth who started protesting at the India Gate braving lathi charge and water canons to demand capital punishment to the culprits.
Under that pressure the Delhi Police managed to arrest all the culprits from wherever they had gone and one of them was a minor (which is the same as juvenile although people confuse juvenile with juvenile delinquent).
Newspapers and TV channels looking for as much information as they could dig out from sources in the police started painting the minor as the most violent. All this on the basis of the statement of driver of the bus Ram Singh who had actually invited the boy to meet him on that day to settle some monetary dispute.
Since the hearing of the Juvenile was held in the Juvenile Justice Board at the Prayas Observation Home for Boys at Feroz Shah Kotla no journalist had any clue as to the hearing.
I am privy to some of that information and by virtue of that I can say that of course he was a part of that gang present in the bus but he was not the most brutal. I think one of the Judges has even gone on record to say this even though this does not reduce the criminality of that boy.
However we may not like it, children who constitute nearly 40 percent of the total population have been given certain privileges to secure their future.The Juvenile Justice Act deals with both categories of children -those who are victims (children in need of care and protection) and those are offenders - children in conflict with law.
The hearing of the second category are held in JJBs (there is a very positive move to setup such boards in J and K where no such board exists but that will be a later story) because the lawmakers do not want these offenders to be thrown into adult jails with all its sinister connotations.
The law believes and many international psychologists have confirmed that the offences of such children have to dealt with differently because their brains are not fully developed before 18. Which means these are mostly acts of passion at the spur of the moment (I know after this the lynch mobs may start looking for me ) but that's the official law.
And as a supporting document I would like the journalists to read a 70 page report presented by the Parliamentary Committee in 2015 which unanimously recommended that the age of children should not be reduced from 18 to 16. It is another matter that later on a cabinet committee arbitrarily decided to reduce the age of minors for 'heinous crimes' on the ground that the popular perception is that people want this change.
Anyway this was not applicable on December 2012 when the tragic incident had occurred. Under the Juvenile Justice Act there is a provision that once the child has completed his three years in the Reform Home he is free to pursue his life the way he wants.
The JJ Act of India which is one of the best pieces of legislations in the world is meant to protect the interests of the child of both categories. One of the provisions of the JJ Act is that once the juvenile is free, all his police records are destroyed. This is to ensure that later on he can use his talent to excel or compete in any field because life doesn't end at 18. It should be a beginning.
One is also tempted to believe that the media haunting of the juvenile is because a national newspaper revealed his religious identity which is against reporting norms. It was perhaps not a coincidence that it was only after this that certain people jumped into the fray to portray him as an ISI agent. An influential and loud anchor tried to tell the President of India to hang him because he was a terrorist. But the Home Ministry did not find any substance in this.
And the media should let him live and look for some other scapegoat for the failure of the law and order machinery.