Arise Lady Justice!

Wikipedia says a ‘minor’ is a person under a certain age which legally demarcates childhood from adulthood. A lot of fond memories come back to my mind when I think about the term childhood. It was a time when I knew much lesser about the world and even lesser about the vices in it. Childhood is synonymous to innocence. Childhood is when you take your first steps in this big bad world and learn to face the inevitable destiny.

A child makes mistakes and most of them are out of ignorance. It is up to the elders to correct on time so that he understands his mistake. These mistakes usually do not hurt anyone. But when it does and when the child receives a warning, that’s when it gets ingrained in his brain cells that he was wrong and what he did was not to be repeated. Conscience gets developed thus.

It is through a series of these learning that a human being walks through his childhood into adulthood with a sense of right and wrong. The mistakes while being a child is dealt with certain amount of love and tenderness. The same mistakes committed even after the child has grown up are considered with a certain level of seriousness. A flower vase broken by a baby when he begins to walk is taken lightly. Imagine when a similar incident happens when he is fifteen, but this time if the vase was broken purposefully, the reactions are guaranteed to be different.

Mistakes can be accidental or intentional. They are not the same. The former is unplanned and the latter results from a conscious mind. The mind says you are going to commit a mistake but you choose to ignore and go ahead with the intention. The way these two are to be treated must also be different.

When you hurt someone with the intention of inflicting pain on the body and soul of a fellow human being, your conscience dies. Any intentional mistake should be considered with the same amount of gravity irrespective of the age of the person who commits it. The retribution should also be awarded accordingly. The sheer loop hole in the law for exempting a juvenile from the sentence even when an intentional mistake is committed is unacceptable! It is like giving a lollypop to the fifteen year old for breaking the vase. 

He must pay the price for the mistake he committed. It is high time the Lady Justice removed the blinds from her eyes and took a good look at the case. The truth is bare. It is a crime! He deserves the maximum!

Look into the eyes of the young girl, who like you and me had all the rights to walk on the streets of this country. That was when one ‘child’ brutally assaulted, twice raped and left the helpless girl to die on the same streets. This is not childhood neither is this innocence!

While you hold that balance straight to give a fair judgement answer her question, ‘Are you denying me justice because I am an adult and the one who violated and killed me was not one?’

Bottom line: Change the law!