Rahim (not his real name), aged about 14, was released from a district jail in Bangladesh a few days ago, a month after his arrest for a crime he said he did not commit.

Rahim can consider himself lucky as he was freed — through the intervention of a lawyer — after only one month in detention.

Hundreds of other teenage boys and girls are not as fortunate as they continue to languish in different jails around Bangladesh without trial, their families too poor to engage lawyers to plead their cases and secure bail.

The irony is, the law forbids sending boys and girls under 16 years to jail even if they are guilty of any crimes. According to the Children Act of 1974, children accused of any crime have to be sent to remand homes or correction centres.

The act further stipulates that chidren — those aged 16 and below — will have to be tried as juveniles and not as adults.

"But in reality, the police often flout the legal provision and do not document the age of the arrested children in order to avoid the responsibilities involved in processing the cases of child prisoners," said a lawyer from the Dhaka Bar Association who wished not to be named.

Avoid complications

The lawyer pointed out that when a child is arrested he or she is usually identified as an adult to avoid complications. "There is also no mechanism to determine the actual age of an arrested child promptly," he said in a phone interview.

The police, however, refute the allegations. At a discussion on Children in Jails in Dhaka last month, Inspector General of Prisons M Zillur Rahman said: "Ages of arrested children are not deliberately increased. In fact, police lack knowledge about their age and this is a major reason why many children land in jails."

The number of children languishing in different jails around the country has been officially put at 1029. The unofficial figure, however, could be five times higher, according to another lawyer dealing mainlywith criminal cases.

Activists also note that in cases where a child and an adult are accused of the same offences, the adult is set free on bail while the child is kept on remand during the period due to lack of legal representation.

The right to legal assistance is guaranteed by the constitution, but it is not enforced in the case of the children, one lawyer said.

Attorney General Hasan Arif said there should be total prohibition on the arrest of children. "There are many laws to protect the children, but unfortunately many of them are not implemented," he lamented.

Referring to the attitude of some lawyers towards children, Arif was candid to admit to being apathetic.

Insensitive

"We are insensitive to the rights of the children. We are least bothered about the state of children in jails. Judges try children and send them to jails instead of sending them to correction centres," he said during the discussion about children in prison.

He emphasised the need to create awareness among law enforcers, judges and prosecutors about the rights of children.

Child rights activists also deplore the practice of keeping children in the same cells as hardened criminals, or those with long prison sentences, saying it is a blatant violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Being in the same prison cells as adult criminals can be traumatic to the children, they add.

At last month's round-table, former child detainees described the conditions in jails as "inhuman". They said both the quality and quantity of food supplied to them were sub-standard. There was always a dearth of water and sanitation was "sickening", they told the seminar.

Sexual abuse of young prisoners by law enforcers as well as adult criminals is commonplace in jails, the former inmates said.

Perennial problem

Congestion in jails is another perennial problem. All the 65 prisons in Bangladesh are crammed way beyond their capacity, prison officials themselves admit.

They say that while the total capacity of these prisons is little over 24,000, jails on average are filled three times more than what they can take.

Activists have also expressed concern over the reported torture of child prisoners in jails. They suggested forming a special core group comprising members from civil society, journalists, lawyers and government officials to scrutinise the conditions of children in all jails and police stations across the country.

This group should strictly see it to that child rights are not violated in any of the jails, they suggested.

The non-government organisation Save the Children UK, expressed concern at the alleged institutional violence against children in Bangladesh. "Unless there is collective and systematic endeavour on the part of the government, NGOs and key civil society actors, justice for children will remain elusive," it said in a report.