THE Supreme Court has said that personal liberty of a person is one of the oldest concepts to be purported by national courts, and by lodging juveniles in adult prisons amounts to deprivation of their personal liberty on multiple aspects. A bench comprising Justices Surya Kant and J B Pardiwala said the concept of personal liberty has received a far more expansive interpretation and the notion accepted today is that liberty encompasses these rights and privileges which have long been recognised as being essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by a free man and not merely freedom from bodily restraint. “There can be no cavil in saying that lodging juveniles in adult prisons amounts to deprivation of their personal liberty on multiple aspects”, said the bench, in a judgment delivered on Monday.

 

It further added, “Personal liberty of a person is one of the oldest concepts to be purported by national courts. As long ago as in 1215, the English Magna Carta provided that: “No free man shall be taken or imprisoned.... but..... by law of the land”. The bench noted that awareness about the rights of the child and correlated duties remain low among the functionaries of the juvenile justice system. It emphasised that once a child is caught in the web of the adult criminal justice system, it is difficult for the child to get out of it unscathed. “The bitter truth is that even the legal aid programmes are mired in systemic bottlenecks and often it is only at a considerably belated stage of the proceeding that the person becomes aware of the rights, including the right to be differently treated on the ground of juvenility”, said the bench.