Victim’s family challenge HC order
father of the eightyear-old, who was murdered inside a school toilet last year, approached the Supreme Court on Thursday, challenging the Punjab and Haryana high court’s order to the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) of Gurugram for reconsideration and terming the process adopted to declare the juvenile in conflict with the law as an adult ‘illegal’.
The Class 2 student was murdered on September 8, 2017, on the school campus, allegedly by a 17-year-old student, who wanted to get examinations and a parentteacher meeting postponed, as per the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) charge sheet filed at a district and sessions court in the city. Meanwhile, the JJB’s principal magistrate, who had to form a medical board to assess the mental and psychological assessment of the juvenile, has been promoted and transferred to Ambala as the chief judicial magistrate. Consequently, the medical board could not be constituted as the incumbent principal magistrate is yet to join the JJB. The JJB, on the basis of its assessment and report of the medical board, will decide, within six weeks, whether the juvenile would be tried as an adult. In another development, the father of the juvenile has filed a bail petition with the children’s special court in Gurugram on Thursday, which will be heard on Monday.
As per the Juvenile Justice Act, those between the ages of 16-18 can be tried as an adult in case of heinous crimes, after following a due process involving the JJB, as per a 2015 law.
The juvenile’s father challenged the JJB order at the sessions court, which upheld the JJB order. He had filed a petition at the high court against the JJB order. The HC, on October 11, referred the case back to the JJB for reconsideration and termed the process adopted by the board for trying the juvenile as an adult ‘illegal’. The Punjab and Haryana HC had passed the order in view of the juvenile’s submission that they were not given a copy of the social and psychological report, on the basis of which the juvenile was declared an adult, and that they were not given a chance to challenge the report.