Plea of juvenility may be raised before any Court and at any stage, even after final disposal of the case: Supreme Court
In a recent order, the Supreme Court (SC) bench comprising Justice BR Gavai and Justice Sandeep Mehta held that the plea of juvenility may be raised before any Court and at any stage, even after final disposal of the case. The bench further remarked, “It can be said without a cavil of doubt that the plea of juvenility raised by the appellant could not have been thrown out without conducting proper inquiry.” The top court was hearing an appeal against the judgment of the Patna High Court. In this case, the appellant and the co-accused were tried by the learned first Additional Sessions Judge for the offences punishable under Sections 302 and 394 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, and Section 27(2) of the Arms Act, 1959. The trial Court convicted the appellant and the co-accused for the aforementioned offences and awarded a death sentence to them.
Further, the appellant (Rahul Kumar Yadav) approached the Patna High Court. The learned Judges of the Division Bench of the Patna High Court, gave a split opinion vide judgment dated 30th April 2014 with one of the learned judges opining that the appeal was devoid of merit and other learned judge opining that the appeal deserves to be allowed and the accused were entitled to be acquitted by giving them the benefit of doubt. Therefore, the matter was referred to the third learned Single Judge of the Patna HC who dismissed the appeal but commuted the death sentence awarded to the appellant and the co-accused to life imprisonment. It was noticed that even before the case was committed, the appellant herein had moved an application under Section 7-A of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000 before the learned Chief Judicial Magistrate claiming that he was a juvenile as on the date of the incident (July 27, 2011). However, the Chief Judicial Magistrate proceeded to reject the said application.
The matter was mentioned before the Supreme Court bench where learned senior counsel Shri Rauf Rahim appeared on behalf of the appellant. The top court was not convinced with the HC’s approach for not adverting to the appellant’s (Rahul’s) prayer to consider his plea of juvenility and observed, “proper inquiry in accordance with the provisions of the JJ Act, 2000 or the JJ Act, 2015 was not carried out so to consider the prayer made by the appellant to be treated as juvenile on the date of the incident even though the plea was raised at the earliest opportunity. It can be said without a cavil of doubt that the plea of juvenility raised by the appellant could not have been thrown out without conducting proper inquiry.” While hearing the matter, Justice Mehta observed “the proviso to Section 9(2) of the JJ Act, 2015 clearly enumerates that plea of juvenility may be raised before any Court and it shall be recognized at any stage, even after final disposal of the case. The High Court, however, did not consider and decide the prayer of juvenility raised on behalf of the appellant.”
After hearing all the contentions, the SC said, “On going through the record, we find that proper inquiry in accordance with the provisions of the JJ Act, 2000 or the JJ Act, 2015 was not carried out so to consider the prayer made by the appellant to be treated as a juvenile on the date of the incident even though the plea was raised at the earliest opportunity. It can be said without a cavil of doubt that the plea of juvenility raised by the appellant could not have been thrown out without conducting proper inquiry.” The SC directed the learned First Additional Sessions Judge, Darbhanga to conduct a thorough inquiry to determine the age/date of birth of Rahul Kumar Yadav as per the procedure provided under the JJ Act, 2015.
