After 28 years of jail, SC sets free death row convict on ground of juvenility

The Supreme Court Monday set free a death row convict after finding that he was a minor boy aged 12 years and six months as per his school register at the time of committing murders of five women and two children in Pune in 1994.

A bench of Justices K M Joseph, Aniruddha Bose and Hrishikesh Roy ordered that the applicant who had already remained in jail for 28 years would be released forthwith.

The death penalty, awarded to him by a trial court was upheld by the High Court as well as the top court, cannot be sustained, the bench added. The applicant along with the two other accomplices had committed the murder of five women, including a pregnant one and two children.

"The other factor which has crossed our mind is as to whether a boy of 12 years could commit such a gruesome crime. But though this factor shocks us, we cannot apply speculation of this nature to cloud our adjudication process. We possess no knowledge of child psychology or criminology to take into account this factor while examining the report of the inquiring judge," the bench said.

Moreover, the age of the applicant as revealed in the ossification test keeps the age of the applicant as claimed by him, within the range specified in the inquiry report by a district court judge, the bench added.

After several attempts, the applicant here on October 30, 2018 filed an application before the top court seeking a declaration that he was a juvenile at the time of the offence.

The court then ordered an inquiry by the Principal District and Sessions Judge Pune in 2019, who gave a finding that the applicant was of 12 years and six months at the time of offence on August 24, 1994.

Accepting the inquiry report, the bench said he cannot be subjected to capital punishment.

"The order sentencing him to death would stand invalidated by operation of law. He shall be set free forthwith from the correctional home in which he remains imprisoned, as he has suffered imprisonment for more than 28 years," the bench said.

During the hearing, the bench, which called for the source of record of the date of birth of the convict, pointed out that the state, in this case, has not come up with any such compelling evidence which would render such a certificate to be unreliable or false.

"Here, we cannot indulge in any guesswork to doubt the entry in the school register. No evidence has been led to contradict the basis of the age of the applicant," the bench said.