Remember well that Chepauk Test in Jan 1977 –
Tony Greig captained England to a great 200 win in a series otherwise marred by
the ‘vaseline incident’ of John Lever. At Chepauk, it was the 3rd Test of
the Series – Indians responding to 262 were shot out for 164 ~ RGD Willis ran in fast, long and furious and
it was a sight to look at – there was Chris Old and the wily Derek Underwood
but it was the left handed John Lever who took a 5 for … In their second innings
England declared at 185 for 9; with Chandra taking 5 and Prasanna 4. Set
to score 284, India gave a pathetic display getting dismissed for a paltry
83. RGD Willis took 3; John Lever 2 and Underwood 4. There was the mercurial Alan Knott who jumped
and pouched with aplomb and swept with equal ease.
Pic credit : sportskeeda.com : Alan Knott sweeps, Farokh Engineer, keeps and Venkat Raghavan seen.
Alan Knott and Derek Underwood hailed from
Kent; there are others like Colin Cowdrey too.
Kent has produced some notable wicket-keepers Les Ames, Godfrey Evans,
Alan Knott, Geraint Jones – Rahul Dravid played one season for Kent, so did Arvinda
de Silva and MuttiahMuralitharan.
As I had
written earlier, my limited knowledge links to Cricket and Kent is a county
playing Cricket. Geographically, read
that is borders Greater London, Surrey, Sussex and Essex !Canterbury Cathedral
in Kent has been the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the Church
of England, since the conversion of England to Christianity by Saint Augustine
in the 6th century.
More
than Cricket and more than Kent, this post is about an Act that differentiates
criminal acts and its punishments based on their age. Borstal is a
place in the unitary authority of Medway in South East England. Originally a
village near Rochester, it has become absorbed by the expansion of Rochester.
The youth prison at Borstal gave its name to the Borstal reform school system.
Its
name came from Anglo-Saxon burg-steall "fort site" or "place of
refuge” – reportedly the village is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 as
Borchetelle, and then consisted of a 50-acre meadow, six households and two
watermills.A borstal was a type of youth detention centre in the United Kingdom
and the Commonwealth. In India, it is known as a borstal school.Borstals were
run by HM Prison Service and intended to reform seriously delinquent young people.
The court sentence was officially called "borstal training". In UK, Borstals were originally for offenders
under 21, but in the 1930s the age was increased to under 23. The Criminal
Justice Act 1982 abolished the borstal system in the UK, introducing youth
custody centres instead.In India, borstal schools are used for the imprisonment
of minors.
Now
there is much heat stating that Borstal school concept has outlived its purpose
and it suggested to the state government to consider repealing it. The Madras
High Court on Wednesday quashed a Tamil Nadu government order declaring all the
sub-jails in the state as borstal schools and suggested it to repeal the Tamil
Nadu Borstal Schools Act, 1925, saying it has outlived its purpose.A
five-member special bench comprising Justices ASelvam, M Sathyanarayanan, B
Rajendran, R Mala, and N Prakash, quashed the Tamil Nadu government order
passed on August 12, 2008.
Borstal
school is a special institution, in which adolescent offenders aged between 18
and 21 are lodged and given industrial training and other instructions.The
special bench was constituted to answer several legal questions such as whether
the Act casts a duty upon the court to examine if an adolescent convict would
be entitled to the benefits of the law and would the failure of the court to
examine this aspect at the time of conviction and sentence, give a vested right
to the offender to claim the benefits retrospectively, even after crossing the
age of 21.
The
bench said the borstal school concept has outlived its purpose and it suggested
to the state government to consider repealing it. Sections 8 and 11 of the Act
do not cast a duty upon the court to examine whether an adolescent offender
would be entitled to the benefit of the Act and it is for the offender to avail
the privilege after his conviction and before the passing of sentence, it
held.However, the convicted person does not have a vested right to claim the
benefits of the Act after crossing the age of 21 years, it further said. It was
open to the magistrates to remand the accused between the age group of 18 and
21 to prisons and not to borstal schools, the bench said.
Holding
that the Borstal Schools Act has become outdated, as it was enacted in 1925 and
it does not serve the purpose any more, Madras High Court has suggested to the
State government to revisit the Act. The
specially constituted five-judge bench, which made the recommendation on August
29, also quashed a GO declaring all the sub-jails in the State as Borstal
schools.It also overruled the judgment of a Full Bench of this High Court
holding that the word ‘imprisonment’ in Section 8 of the Act included
“imprisonment for life,” as it did not lay down the correct position in law and
suggested to the government to repeal the entire Act since it has outlived its
purpose.
Not
many have forgotten and still repent and feel sense of injustice over the
sordid episode of a sentence that seems horribly inadequate for a devious crime. Nirbhaya would never be forgotten when thugs
on a cold December night gang-raped and brutalized, an innocent 23-year-old woman and threw her out of a
moving bus to die. One of them walked
out being a juvenile though having
committed a heinous crime. Nation overwhelming felt that a loophole in our legal system allowed
the perpetrator of a heinous crime to escape. As if the sense of injustice wasn’t
enough, the Delhi government announced a
rehabilitation plan for the convict that provided financial grant along with a
sewing machine, rental space for a tailoring shop and ancillary help to sustain
his business for a period of six months !
With
regards – S. Sampathkumar
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