Non-Disclosure of a Juvenile Conviction Cannot Justify Termination of Service: Rajasthan High Court

The petitioner was appointed as a Constable (para 2); the respondents are the Union of India and officers of the Indo-Tibet Border Police Force. As a juvenile he had been tried by the Juvenile Justice Board for IPC offences and found guilty, but was given the benefit of probation under Section 15 of the 2000 Act and admonished; a penalty of Rs 1,000 was imposed on his guardian (paras 2, 14). Believing the record had been removed, he did not mention the case in his application form (paras 3, 15). On 06.05.2008 his services were terminated for concealing the conviction (para 1). The respondents said the deliberate concealment reflected on his character (para 5).

Section 19 of the 2000 Act provides that a juvenile shall not suffer any disqualification attaching to a conviction and that the Board shall order removal of records; Section 24 of the 2015 Act and Rule 14 of the 2016 Model Rules require such records to be destroyed (paras 10-12). The Court read these provisions as making a juvenile's ‘right to be forgotten’ an absolute right (paras 13, 22). Following Delhi High Court rulings and the Supreme Court's decision in (2019) 19 SCC 710 that even a juvenile's conviction must be obliterated to avoid stigma (paras 16-18, 32), it held that a juvenile given this benefit cannot be declared ineligible for public employment (para 19). Here the Board itself had ordered that the conviction would not be a disqualification and that its record be destroyed (paras 26-27). Non-disclosure was therefore a valid excuse and not concealment (paras 25, 28). The respondents' plea that he was bound to disclose the case failed, and the police should not have revealed it during verification, which the Court called prima facie a gross breach of confidentiality (para 31).