Supreme Court Requires States/UTs To Furnish Details Of Financial Stability Of Parents/Guardians Of Children 'Restored' In Pandemic

The bench headed by Justice L. Nageswara Rao noted that in view of the improving situation relating to the pandemic, some states have reopened schools. On account of the same, there might be movement from the parental homes where the children were restored during the pandemic back to the Child Care Institutions. The bench noted the submission Amicus Curiae Gaurav Agarwal, in reference to the affidavit filed by the state of Tamil Nadu, that 9852 families, out of the 33892 families to which the children were restored, are financially unstable.

"There is a need for finding out the financial stability of parents/guardians to whom children were restored from the Child Care Institutions due to the pandemic. The state government and the Union Territories are required to gather this information from the social welfare department and other authorities about the present position relating to children in the Child Care Institutions and those who are still with their parents/guardians. The state government/Union Territories shall provide information about the financial stability of the families of those children who were restored to the parents/guardians from the Child Care Institutions in two weeks", directed the bench.

"If the children have gone to their parents/guardians during COVID, are they being sent back to the CCIs now? In view of the fast-changing scenario as regards the pandemic, what is the present position as regards the children going back to the CCIs?", asked Justice Rao. 

"When children are brought into the Child Care Institutions, not all of them are brought in as 'juveniles'- some of them are in need of care, some are victims, some are orphans. It is the responsibility of the Child Welfare Committees to find out why they had come in the first place and if they can be restored. There is always a pre-existent condition of sending the children to the Child Care Institutions. So the restoration may not be an across-the-board policy. There has to be some filtering mechanism. The student cannot be pushed back to their parents or where they had come from. They might be subjected to a risk of trafficking otherwise", observed Justice Ravindra Bhat.

Justice Bhat proceeded to clarify that the restoration in the present case was not one contemplated under the statutory framework of the Juvenile Justice Act per se, but the children had been sent back to their parents/guardians during the pandemic on account of the risk of infection which living in such clusters posed and also because, on account of the lock down, the employees of these institutions were also unable to come and cater to them. "But now the underlying concern is of why they had been brought to the Child Care Institutions in the first place", pointed out Justice Bhat.

The 2015 JJ Act envisages that every child in the juvenile justice system shall have the right to be re-united with his family at the earliest and to be restored to the same socio- economic and cultural status that he was in, before coming under the purview of this Act.

Mr. Agarwal pointed out that as of June, 2020, 148788 children had been restored from the CCIs to their parents/guardians. "They are shrugging off the responsibility. The government is financing them, they cannot divest the responsibility in such manner", observed Justice Bhat.

Accordingly, the bench required the states and the Union Territories to furnish the position as to the children who had been restored to their parents/guardians during the pandemic and how many of them have been sent back to the CCIs. The bench also required the state governments and the Union Territories to furnish information relating to the vacancy positions in the Child Welfare Committees and Juvenile Justice Boards in two weeks.