How Those Offences Are Tried

In one line

The offences in Chapter IX are classified by their punishment, tried by the Children's Court, and punished under whichever law is heavier.

In exam wording: sections 86 to 89 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 classify the offences under the Act as cognizable or non-cognizable and bailable or non-bailable, confer their trial on the Children's Court, punish abetment, provide for alternative punishment, and provide for an offence under the Chapter committed by a child.

Why the law has this at all

The offences in the last chapter had to be fitted into the general machinery of criminal procedure, and three questions had to be answered for each of them.

Can the police act on their own? That is the cognizable and non-cognizable question. Is bail a right? That is the bailable and non-bailable question. Who tries it? That is section 86(4).

The Act answers the first two by a single arithmetical rule keyed to the punishment, which is tidier than the First Schedule's offence-by-offence listing. But the rule as originally enacted made every offence punishable with three years or more cognizable, and that produced a difficulty. The commonest such offences are the ones committed inside institutions, and a power to arrest without warrant on a bare complaint was found to be too blunt an instrument in that setting.

So the 2021 amendment substituted section 86 and moved the middle band. Offences punishable with three years and above but not more than seven are now non-cognizable, though still non-bailable. The practical effect is that the police cannot register and investigate such a case on their own: they need the order of a Magistrate under the procedure for a non-cognizable offence, which in the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita is section 174.

Some words this chapter uses

Cognizable means the police may investigate without the order of a Magistrate and may arrest without warrant; non-cognizable means they may not.

Bailable means bail is a matter of right; non-bailable means it is not.

Alternative punishment in section 88 does not mean a choice of punishments; it means a choice of the law under which the offender is punished.

Section 86: classification and the court

Sub-section (1). Where an offence under this Act is punishable with imprisonment for a term of more than seven years, it shall be cognizable and non-bailable.

Sub-section (2). Where it is punishable with imprisonment for a term of three years and above, but not more than seven years, it shall be non-cognizable and non-bailable.

Sub-section (3). Where it is punishable with imprisonment for less than three years, or with fine only, it shall be non-cognizable and bailable.