CHENNAI: More than 30 years after he was arrested for rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl, and after having served a large part of his life sentence, a man was ordered to be released by Madras high court, after it found that he was a juvenile at the time of the offence and that he could not have been treated as an adult and sentenced to life-term.“The crime committed by the convict is certainly heinous … However, it is well settled that the plea of juvenility can be raised at any stage even if the conviction and sentence has become final,” a division bench of Justice Anitha Sumanth and Justice Sunder Mohan said on Tuesday.Though the juvenility of the accused was raised during the appeal challenging the trial court’s order, high court held that he was not a juvenile during the commission of the offence (Oct 7, 1996) as according to the Juvenile Justice Act 1986, only people below 16 years are considered as juvenile.However, in the Juvenile Justice Act 2000, the age limit was raised to 18 years. Also, an explanation was brought in 2006 making it clear that in all pending cases, including the trial, revision, appeal or any other criminal proceedings in respect of a juvenile in conflict with law, the determination of juvenility shall be in terms of JJ Act, 2000.Unfortunately, this explanation was not brought to the court’s notice. By virtue of this provision, the convict who was 16 years, five months and two days old during the occurrence of the crime had to be treated as a juvenile, the court said.“This court would have certainly found the convict to be a juvenile, had the above provision been brought to its notice. Therefore, though the plea of juvenility was raised and decided, since a very important statutory provision was not considered, this case has to be treated on a par with any other case where the plea of juvenility was not raised either before the trial court or the appellate court,” the bench added.
