Whether Writ Of Habeas Corpus Maintainable Against Judicial Order Sending A Juvenile To A Juvenile Home? Allahabad High Court FB To Decide

A Division Bench of the Allahabad High Court on Tuesday made a reference to a Full Bench, seeking to decide the issue whether a writ of habeas corpus is maintainable against an order passed by a Judicial Magistrate/ Child Welfare Committee, sending a corpus to the Juvenile Home/ Nari Niketan/ Child Care Home. Precedents in State's favour In Saurabh Pandey v. State of Uttar Pradesh, 2019 SCC OnLine All 4430, it was held, "the order passed by the Child Welfare Committee placing the corpus in a protection home would be within its powers conferred by section 37 of the J.J. Act, 2015…as the corpus is in Women Protection Home pursuant to an order passed by the Child Welfare Committee, which is neither without jurisdiction nor illegal or perverse, keeping in mind the provisions of the J.J. Act, 2015, the detention of the corpus cannot be said to be illegal so as to warrant issuance of a writ of habeas corpus." In view of these circumstances, the Division Bench said, "The two sets of judgments delivered by this Court reflect that one view of this Court is that a writ of habeas corpus is maintainable against the order passed by the Committee/Court, sending the corpus to the Juvenile Home/Nari Niketan/Child Care Home, whereas according to other view, if a judicial order has been passed by the competent Court, veracity of the same cannot be decided in a writ of habeas corpus and the same is required to be challenged before the competent Court. It proceeded to formulate the following questions to be decided by the larger Bench: Whether a writ of habeas corpus is maintainable against the judicial order passed by the Magistrate or by the Child Welfare Committee appointed under Section 27 of the Act, sending the victim to Women Protection Home/Nari Niketan/Juvenile Home/Child Care Home?