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National Commission for Protection of Child Rights v. Rajesh Kumar

Civil Appeal · 2020 INSC 35Decided 13 Jan 2020
Civil Appeal No. 7968 of 2019
Justice Deepak Gupta · Justice Aniruddha Bose

Background

Following media reports of a large-scale child-trafficking racket at a child-care/adoption institution in Jalpaiguri, West Bengal, both the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and the West Bengal State Commission (WBCPCR) sought to inquire into the matter. When the NCPCR summoned a senior West Bengal police officer for information, he instead challenged its jurisdiction before the Calcutta High Court, arguing the State Commission had already taken up the matter; the High Court agreed and stayed the NCPCR's proceedings.

Decision Breakdown

After examining both Commissions' internal files, the Supreme Court found that the WBCPCR had not genuinely begun any inquiry before the NCPCR started its own on 07.03.2017: the state body had merely called for a report despite claiming earlier "cognizance." The Court clarified that Section 13(2) of the CPCR Act does not create watertight jurisdictional silos between the national and state bodies; it only requires the National Commission to step back once a state commission has actually begun inquiring, and the two are meant to cooperate rather than compete. Criticizing the "clash of egos" between the bodies and the police officer's refusal to cooperate, the Court held the NCPCR was entitled to proceed, directed the Calcutta High Court to monitor related child-protection failures in West Bengal, and disposed of the appeal as far as the inter-commission dispute was concerned, while an unrelated issue about setting up special human-rights courts, also pending in the same appeal, was expressly left to be decided later along with a connected writ petition.

Lesson Learnt

Statutory bodies created to protect children are expected to cooperate rather than compete over turf: an inquiry "belongs" to a commission only once it has genuinely started investigating, not merely by claiming cognizance on paper, and officials cannot refuse information requests from such commissions by raising jurisdictional objections of their own.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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