LAHORE, Nov 22: A full bench of the Lahore High Court reserved its judgment on constitutional petitions against the Punjab Juvenile Justice System Ordinance, 2000, on the ground that it prompted discrimination.
The bench concluded the hearing of a number of petitions which described the ordinance as a bad law because it promoted corruption, caused a social imbalance, created complications for courts to dispense justice and gave the younger people a free hand to kill and molest.
One of the petitioners, Farooq Ahmad of Faisalabad, submitted that the accused who burnt his son alive after committing sodomy, was escaping death penalty because his family had produced a certificate that he was under 18 years of age and the sessions court had accepted the plea to try him as a juvenile.
Counsels for petitioners rejected the ordinance on a number of grounds. They submitted that the most anomalous part of the ordinance was that it did not define a juvenile but a child. They stated that the ordinance provided that all people under 18 years of age were children. However, it made no mention of what a juvenile was.
They submitted that article 11 of the constitution prohibited labour by a child under 14 years of age. This meant that the constitution fixed 14 years as the age of the child.
Likewise, the Punjab Youthful Offenders Ordinance defined the child as a person who was under 15 years of age. They cited PLD 1966 Pesh 97 and 1999 SCMR 1507 and submitted that these decisions settled the issue of punishment to younger people by saying that they could not be given lesser punishment because of their age.
They submitted that ordinance was in conflict with the constitution and other laws on the question of the age which was the most fundamental aspect of the law.
The counsel stated that section 239 of the Criminal Procedure Court provided that there should be a joint trial if the number of accused was more than one. But the ordinance separated the accused under 18 years of age which was not only illegal but also impracticable.
They stated that a juvenile was, for all practical purposes, an adolescent who had to be defined under the law. They said if the juveniles were to be separated from trial in heinous crime like gang rape and blasphemy, they could instrumental in the hands of the mafias who could employ them for commission of such crimes. This would amount to giving the younger people a free hand in promoting crime in society.
They stated that the ordinance had caused corruption in society. Municipal officials, doctors and even educational institutions could be prone to corruptions while determining age of a person.
There were examples that bogus certificates were produced in courts and educational institutions to give benefit to certain persons to save them from the law. They stated that the law was also in conflict with the fundamental rights as it separated young criminals from the elders.
Punjab government law officer Yasmin Sehgal also subscribed with this view by stating that the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance was discriminatory and had all the potential to create social imbalance.
Only Deputy Attorney-General Nawaz Bhatti supported the law in stating that it was aimed at reforming the people of younger age and that the court had no jurisdiction in striking it down.