The NCPCR draft guidelines

Source: By Sadaf Modak: The Indian Express

The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has come up with draft guidelines on the preliminary assessment of whether certain minors are to be tried under law as adults in particular cases, under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act. The 12-page draft guidelines, prepared after consultation with experts, are open for inputs and comments from the general public till 20 January.

What is preliminary assessment as per the JJ Act?

Earlier, all children under the age of 18 were considered minors by the law, but through an amendment in 2015, a provision was added to the JJ Act for trying a child in conflict with the law as an adult. Under this, a child in the age group of 16-18 years could be tried as an adult in case of heinous offences. Section 15 (1) of the Act states that the Juvenile Justice Board shall conduct a preliminary assessment to determine whether to try such a child as an adult or a minor.

The Act directs that the Board shall consider the mental and physical capacity of the child for committing the alleged offence, the ability to understand the consequences of the offence, and the circumstances in which the offence was committed. It states that the Board can take the assistance of experienced psychologists or psychosocial workers or other experts. The Act also gives a disclaimer that the assessment is not a trial, but is only to assess the capacity of the child to commit and understand the consequences of the alleged offence.

After the assessment, the Board can pass an order saying there is a need to try the said child as an adult and transfer the case to a children’s court with the relevant jurisdiction. If tried as a minor, the child could be sent to a special home for a maximum of three years. If tried as an adult, the child can be sentenced to a jail term, except being sentenced to death or life imprisonment without the possibility of release.

Why has the NCPCR come up with draft guidelines now?

On 13 July 2022, the Supreme Court while hearing a case related to the murder of a Class 2 student in Haryana, allegedly by a 16-year-old, said the task of preliminary assessment under the J J Act is a “delicate task”. It said that the consequences of the assessment on whether the child is to be tried as an adult or a minor are “serious in nature and have a lasting effect for the entire life of the child”.

It said that the assessment requires expertise and directed that appropriate and specific guidelines be put in place. It had left it open to the Central government and the National and State Commissions for the Protection of Child Rights to consider issuing the guidelines.

The NCPCR has framed guidelines which describe the key procedures to conduct the preliminary assessment. It said that while the course of assessment may differ from child to child, the guidelines are meant to frame essential components and the basic mechanisms to address any ambiguity.

What do the draft guidelines say?

The draft relying on already existing provisions in the Act says that the preliminary assessment has to determine four aspects:

a. Physical capacity of the child: To determine the child’s ‘locomotor’ abilities and capacities, particularly with regard to gross motor functions such as walking, running, lifting, throwing…such abilities as would be required to engage in most antisocial activities.

b. Mental capacity: To determine the child’s ability to make social decisions and judgments. It also directs assessments pertaining to mental health disorders, substance abuse, and life skills deficits.

c. Circumstances in which the offence was allegedly committed: Psychosocial vulnerabilities of the child. This is to include life events, any trauma, abuse, and mental health problems, stating that the offence behaviour is a cumulative consequence of a lot of other circumstances.

d. Ability to understand the consequences of the alleged offence: To determine the child’s knowledge or understanding of the alleged offence’s social, interpersonal and legal consequences. These include what others will say or perceive him, how it might affect his personal relationships and the knowledge of relevant laws, respectively.

It also states that the experts must be given an optimal opportunity to interact with the child to build a rapport. Experts can be from the field of child psychology and psychiatry. It also states they must undergo regular training. Additionally, a copy of the assessment must be given to the child and a legal aid counsel must be present during the assessment. it must be within three months of the child being produced before the Board.

Other reports that the Board is to rely on include the Social Investigation Report, Social Background Report an Individual Care Plan, statements of witnesses and interaction with parents, guardians, school staff, peer groups and neighbours.

What had the Supreme Court said about the preliminary assessment?

In the Haryana case, the Board had decided in December 2017 to treat the 16-year-old as an adult. The order was challenged by his parents before the Punjab and Haryana High Court. In October 2018, the High Court directed the Board to make a fresh assessment, stating irregularities, including that the documents relied on by the Board were not provided to the child, the reports of experts were incomplete and a recommendation by an expert to refer the child to a higher-level organisation was not acted upon by the Board.

The victim’s family and the CBI filed appeals before the Supreme Court. In 2022, the SC dismissed the appeal and directed a fresh reconsideration by the Board.

It pointed out that the task of preliminary assessment had its own implications for the trial. It then noted that the Act or the Model Rules of the Act do not lay down guidelines or a framework to facilitate the Board in making a proper assessment. It said that the obligation of the Board, consisting of one judicial member and two others, to conduct the assessment largely depended on the Board’s wisdom, without there being any guidelines on how to conduct it. In the absence of any guidelines, the Board has to use its discretion.

It said that the assessment had been a question of debates, analysis and research and referred to contents from various sources, including a detailed study by the National Law University, Orissa, and Guidance Notes by NIMHANS. The draft guidelines by the NCPCR also refer to the SC’s excerpts from these reports.

PODCAST

Nuclear fusion breakthrough

Source: By M Ramesh: The businessline

On 13 December 2022, the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, US, announced that it had achieved a ‘net energy gain’ — got out more energy than was put in — by fusion. The input energy was 2.05 megajoules and the output was 3.15 MJ. This is unprecedented, hence the excitement.

What was the experiment and how did the energy gain happen?

They put in a mixture of Deuterium (D) and Tritium (T), which are isotopes (variants) of hydrogen, in a capsule the size of a grain of wheat and bombarded it with light from 192 lasers. This caused the electrons of D and T to come off their parent atoms; electrons and nuclei of D and T were floating about as a soup of matter — called ‘plasma’, which, like solid, liquid and gas, is another state in which matter exists. This plasma continued to be bombarded with laser lights and in the ensuing commotion, some nuclei crashed with others, fused with each other. When atoms fuse, they release energy.

Why does it take energy to fuse atoms together?

Atoms have positively charged protons in the nucleus (along with electrically neutral neutrons). Negatively charged electrons exist around the nucleus, in multiple ringed pathways — somewhat like the Sun and the planets. Since the number of protons and electrons are the same, the atom is electrically neutral. Take out one or more electrons, it becomes a positively charged ion. Add more electrons, it turns into negatively charged ion.

If you rip all the electrons from an atom, what remains is the positively charged nucleus. When two such nuclei come close to each other, they repel, or move away from each other, because fundamentally, like charges (positive-positive or negative-negative) repel and unlike charges (positive-negative) attract. 

So, to fuse two nuclei into one larger nucleus, you need to overcome the force of repulsion. It is like bringing together the north poles or south poles of two magnets. The closer you bring the positively charged nuclei, the more energy you need to bring them further closer. 

But at a particular point (called ‘Coloumb barrier’) the nuclei yield. If you bring them as close as a millionth of a billionth of a meter (or, one ‘femtometer’), the repulsive forces are overpowered by the attractive nuclear forces. At this distance, the nuclei rush into each other’s arms and fuse into one. 

The trick is to ride over the hump called the Coulomb barrier; the way to achieve this trick is to keep giving energy.

How much energy is needed?

100 million Kelvin, which is six times as hot as the core of the Sun.

Why does only hydrogen, or its isotopes, figure in all nuclear fusion experiments?

Because the hydrogen atom has only one proton — therefore, the lowest positive charge. The next element, helium, has two protons, the next, lithium, has three, and so on. It is easier to try to fuse two nuclei with the least charge. They use isotopes of hydrogen, D and T, because these nuclei have one and two neutrons, respectively. The presence of neutrons is helpful in fusion — they increase the nuclear forces of attraction, which come into play once the Coloumb barrier is crossed.

In February 2022, the ITER experiment in France also announced some success in nuclear fusion. Is the National Ignition Facility’s achievement the same as ITER’s?

No. While the heart of both is nuclear fusion, their approaches are different. The fundamental difference is in the way the plasma — the soup of electrons, protons and nuclei — is kept there, so that the particles could fuse. Plasma, with its high energy, tends to scatter away. You can’t hold them in a vessel, because no matter what the walls of the vessel are made of, the particles will pass right through them. 

In ITER (a multi-country effort in which India is involved), they held the plasma in the vessel by a method called ‘magnetic confinement’. Wherever the particles go, they encounter magnetic forces that push them right back inside. In the US experiment, they used another method called ‘inertial confinement’. The laser beams, 192 of them, coming from all around the capsule, denied an escape route for the particles in the plasma to shoot out. In fact, the laser energy compresses the particles.

Most scientists say that magnetic confinement is a better way.  Another difference is that while ITER produced energy from fusion, there was no ‘net gain’. But in the case of the US experiment, an energy gain was reported.

So, if an energy gain was achieved, does it mean that nuclear fusion is within reach?

Not at all. The energy gain was in the capsule in which D and T were kept. More energy came out of the capsule than what went in. But to operate the lasers, a heck of a lot more energy — 300MJ — was consumed. Besides, these are extremely expensive, sophisticated lasers, whose costs will tell upon the cost of energy.

What happened at NIF was a baby-step, but in science, baby steps are significant, hence the buzz is entirely justified.