The Delhi High Court has set-aside life sentence of a convict in a murder case after a gap of 18 long years relying on the Ossification Test and accepting his juvenility claim.
The Division Bench of Justice Mukta Gupta and Justice Anish Dayal relied on the Ossification Report that revealed that his age was between 10 to 20 years old on the day of incident.
The incident dates back to 1999 and the conviction of life sentence was delivered in 2004 for offences punishable under Sections 452/302 IPC.
During the pendency of the present appeal, the appellant took the plea of juvenility before the Court the Court and filed an application Section 9(2) of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 seeking determination of his age at the time of alleged offence.
Since it was held in the SC ruling in Hari Ram Vs. State of Rajasthan & ANR., 2009 Latest Caselaw 438 SC that the benefit of the increase of the age of the juvenility to 18 years introduced by the Act of 2000 will apply retrospectively, it was thus to be determined whether the appellant had completed 18 years of age on the date of alleged commission of offence to avail the benefit of the J.J. Act.
In view of the above mandate, the Court remanded the matter to the learned Trial Court exercising the jurisdiction under Section 311 and 391 CrPC read with Section 165 of the Evidence Act to determine the age of the appellant as on 6th November 1999 by resorting to Section 9(2) and Section 94 of the J.J.Act.
Noting that even as per the provisions of Rule 12 of Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Rules, 2007, the only difference was that the matriculation certificate got precedent over the date of birth certificate from the school (other than play school) first attended, the court mentioned that in the present case, since neither the date of birth from the school first attended nor matriculation certificate nor the birth certificate issued by the municipal corporation/ authorities is available, the only course opened to ascertain the age was by seeking medical opinion from the duly constituted medical board which has been done by the learned Additional Sessions Judge pursuant to the order dated 11th December 2019 of this Court.
The Court took to relevance, the result of the testing and accordingly acquitted him.
"Considering the fact that the upper age limit cannot be taken to the detriment of the appellant and as per the lower limit, the appellant was a minor at the time of alleged incident, he is entitled to the benefit of juvenility.The appellant was convicted for offences punishable under Sections 302/452 IPC as noted above. Maintaining the conviction of the appellant for the said offences, which is not being challenged on merits before this Court, the order on sentence is set aside. In any case, the conviction of the appellant, for offences punishable under Sections 302/452 IPC will have no disqualification at any stage against the appellant in terms of Section 24 of the J.J.Act."
The Court additionally mentioned that as per the nominal roll of the appellant, the appellant had been in custody for nearly 5 years and 5 months when his sentence was directed to be suspended.
Noting that even as a juvenile the period of protective custody for rehabilitation that could be awarded was three years, it stated that there is no ground to remand the matter to the Juvenile Justice Board on the order on sentence in terms of the decision of SC in Jitendra Singh @ Babboo Singh & ANR. Vs. State of U.P., 2013 Latest Caselaw 508 SC
CASE TITLE: X vs State of Maharashtra
CASE DETAILS: CRL.A. 35/2005
CORAM: Justice Mukta Gupta and Justice Anish Dayal
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