The Bombay High Court on Wednesday ruled that one of the two minors booked in a murder case be tried as a juvenile, and not as an adult, as directed by the sessions court in an earlier order.
The 17-year-old accused, along with another 16-year-old, were booked in December 2016 for allegedly murdering Junera Khan, a three-and-a-half year old girl from their locality.
Heinous crime
The older of the two supposedly kidnapped the girl with the intention of extracting money from her father and rendered her unconscious, using chloroform, on December 5, 2016. When the search for her intensified, he strangled her using a cell phone charger and dumped her body later in the night.
After the murder was detected, the police filed an application before the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) seeking that both the accused be tried as adults as they were only a few months short of turning 18, and also due to the heinous nature of the crime. The JJB ruled that the older accused be tried as an adult, and the decision was upheld by the sessions court.
The father of the older accused then filed an appeal before the High Court.
On Wednesday, Justice Dama Seshadri Naidu said the earlier verdicts in the matter were all based on the social investigation conducted by the police.
The police, after the case was cracked, had built a profile of the accused based on his family background. The police also submitted a mental health report of the accused to the JJB.
“It is inadvisable to tinker with an expert’s opinion. Yet it remains, after all is said and done, an opinion, at that. The JJB has undertaken no independent assessment; it has, in fact, heavily relied on the social investigation report and mental health report. So its opinion, in the strict sense, cannot be branded an expert opinion,” Mr. Naidu said in his order.
“That being said, the two reports the board has relied on are, indeed, expert opinions — one rendered by a probation officer and the other by a panel of doctors. But neither report brings out into open any exceptional circumstances that compel the older juvenile to face the trial as an adult,” the judge said.
He said the social investigation report, while touching upon several aspects of the older accused’s life, did not have any inputs from the neighbours of the accused.
‘Report favours juvenile’
“(The report) records an improbable circumstance — that in a residential apartment, none was present to provide information on that count. On every other parameter, the report favours the juvenile,” the order stated.
Based on the observations, Mr. Naidu overturned the sessions court’s order and ruled that the older accused be tried as a juvenile.
