Hello,

A 12-year-old child has been arraigned before a half-baked tribunal specially set up by the Madhya Pradesh government. 

The tribunal will judge whether the boy was part of rioters and damaged property of his neighbours during communal riots in Khargone in April that left one dead and over twenty injured.

The Madhya Pradesh government has set up the tribunal for a short duration – comprising a serving state government officer, a retired district judge and a retired senior bureaucrat.  The retired judge and official get to set their own rules of how to run the tribunal and try the accused. The serving government officer gets to pick and choose which claims to consider and which to junk. The tribunal has been set up under a slapdash damage recovery law enacted mimicking Uttar Pradesh government.

The child, the son of a Muslim driver, is being tried based on the claims of his Hindu neighbours that he vandalised and robbed their house during communal riots.

If found guilty, the child could be ordered to pay compensation to his neighbour. In the public eye he would be labelled a rioter. All without a formal criminal investigation that requires a thorough police investigation, a prosecution and a trial before a proper court which follows procedures and safeguards under the Indian Penal Code.

So far, the child has not even been named as an accused by the police in riot cases. But, the tribunal could find him guilty and the tribunal’s ruling could then weigh against the child in court and in the public eye. The tribunal's chairman told The Reporters’ Collective that its decision will not have any impact on the criminal proceedings. 

The boy is not alone in facing this tribunal. Two hundred and seventy people -- 177 Muslims, 93 Hindus and the 12-yr-old Muslim boy – accused of rioting in the western town of Khargone are being tried by the tribunal, a quasi-judicial body with powers of a civil court. “We were both at home on the night of the violence,” said the boy’s father, who has also been served notices by his neighbours for destroying property.

Under The Juvenile Justice Act, the country’s primary legal framework for minors, a 12-year-old cannot be tried as an adult in any criminal proceeding in any Indian court. He can only be tried by a juvenile justice board, according to the law. The trial exposes lacunae in the new law, which allows juveniles to be tried in civil offences, such as destruction of property and looting during riots, even if they do not face criminal charges of rioting as in the case of the boy.

Experts have slammed this law as vague and arbitrary, and decried the lack of legal safeguards available normally to an accused. If the tribunal holds someone responsible for damage, those so accused are legally bound to pay up to twice the amount of damage they allegedly caused, without any determination of guilt under the criminal offence of rioting and damaging property. The boy faces a compensation claim of Rs 2.9 lakh and his father Rs 4.8 lakh.

Read the report by Shreegireesh Jalihal published in Article 14.