Imagine two snapshots of the same child, taken two years apart. In the first, she's eleven, sleeping at a railway station, begging for food. In the second, she's thirteen, being produced before a Juvenile Justice (JJ) Board for theft. To most people, these look like two different stories. To anyone who works in child rights, they are heartbreakingly one. This is the story of how a Child in Need of Care and Protection (CNCP) becomes a Child in Conflict with Law (CCL), not through moral failure, but through systemic neglect.  Two Children. One System. One Failure India's Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, creates two legal categories. Under Section 2(14), a CNCP includes a child who is