SC rejects convict’s plea that he was a juvenile
NEWDELHI:PAWAN Kumar Gupta, one of the four men convicted in the December 2012 gang rape, need not be treated as a juvenile, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday, dismissing a petition filed by the death row convict arguing that he was less than 18 years old at the time the offence was committed.
A bench, headed by justice R Banumathi, rejected Gupta’s appeal against a judgment of the Delhi high court, which had turned down his petition on December 19, 2019. The top court made it clear that the plea of juvenility under the Juvenile Justice Act cannot be re-agitated after the issue was raised and rejected earlier. The court noted that Gupta’s claim of juvenility was rejected by the Metropolitan Magistrate in 2013, Delhi HC in 2014 and the SC in 2018. The court said that though as per the Juvenile Justice Act, a plea regarding age of accused can be raised at any stage of a case, it cannot be raised repeatedly after it has been rejected once.
One of the six people arrested for the 2012 gang-rape and murder of the paramedic was tried as a juvenile and was sent to a correction home for three years before he was released.
Four accused — Pawan (25), Vinay Sharma (26), Mukesh Kumar (32) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) — were convicted and sentenced to death in a trial that was completed within just a year of the gruesome crime.
The sixth, Ram Singh, allegedly killed himself at Tihar jail.
Gupta’s counsel AP Singh, on Monday, produced the school leaving certificate issued in Gupta’s favour by Gayatri Bal Sanskar Shala of Ambedkar Nagar district in Uttar Pradesh which recorded his date of birth as October 8, 1996.
FATHER OF VICTIM SEEKS GUIDELINES
The gang-rape victim’s father on Monday urged SC to frame guidelines on the number of pleas a convict can file, so that women can get time-bound justice. While accusing the four convicts of using ‘delaying tactics’ by filing pleas, he urged the apex court to frame guidelines to ensure that victims get timebound justice.
(With inputs from pti)