Who Is a Child: the Definitions

In one line

Section 2 is a single section of sixty definitions, and the answer to most questions on this Act begins with one of them.

In exam wording: section 2 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 defines the expressions used in the Act, including child, child in conflict with law, child in need of care and protection, and the three classes of offence.

Why the law has this at all

An Act that treats children differently must say who is a child, and an Act that treats some children as adults must say exactly which ones.

That second point is what makes section 2 unusually important here. The 2015 Act's central and most contested provision, section 15, allows a child of sixteen or above alleged to have committed a heinous offence to be tried as an adult. Everything therefore turns on what "heinous" means, and the definition, in section 2(33), is not a description of wickedness but an arithmetical test: is the minimum punishment seven years or more?

That test had a gap, and the gap was found in practice. Take an offence punishable with up to ten years but with no minimum at all. It is not heinous, because there is no minimum of seven years. It was not serious as the clause then stood, and it was not petty. It fell through. Parliament closed the hole by Act 23 of 2021, which substituted clause (54) and brought such offences into the "serious" class with effect from 1 September 2022.

So when this Act is examined, the definitions are not preliminary matter to be skimmed. Section 2(33), 2(45) and 2(54) decide which procedure a child gets, and they are asked directly.

Some words this chapter uses

Minimum punishment is the least sentence the law allows for the offence; maximum is the most.

The Board is the Juvenile Justice Board; the Committee is the Child Welfare Committee; the Authority is the Central Adoption Resource Authority.

The core definitions: who is a child

Section 2(12), "child". A person who has not completed eighteen years of age.

Section 2(35), "juvenile". A child below the age of eighteen years. The Act uses "child" throughout and keeps "juvenile" only in its title and in a few expressions such as the Juvenile Justice Board.

Section 2(13), "child in conflict with law". A child who is alleged or found to have committed an offence and who has not completed eighteen years of age on the date of commission of such offence.

The closing words are the ones to quote. Age is reckoned on the date of the offence, not on the date of arrest, of the inquiry or of the order. A boy who offends at seventeen and is caught at twenty is still a child in conflict with law, which is why sections 5 and 6 of the Act exist.