09 January 2025 :

The Supreme Court of India on January 8, 2025 set free a minor offender, more than 23 years after he was sentenced to death by an Uttarakhand court in a murder case, concluding how “grave injustice” was meted out to him by the trial court, high court and the top court that upheld his punishment overlooking the clear evidence establishing him to be a minor of just 14 years at the time of offence.
Setting right its own mistake, a bench headed by justice MM Sundresh said, “This is a case where the appellant has been suffering due to the error committed by the courts. We have been informed that his conduct in the prison is normal, with no adverse report. He lost an opportunity to reintegrate into the society. The time which he has lost, for no fault of his, can never be restored.”
Directing his release from jail even as the court upheld his conviction in the brutal and chilling murders of three persons in 1994, the bench said that constitutional courts have a task to unearth the truth and give full effect to social welfare legislations such as the Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act, which provides for the plea of minority to be determined by courts.
The bench, also comprising justice Aravind Kumar said, “In a country like ours, where society is fragmented due to various reasons including, but not limited to illiteracy and poverty, the role which is assigned to the court assumes great significance. Sufficient opportunities must be given to the child in conflict with law to get the benefit of the 2015 JJ Act.”
The court was dealing with the convict’s plea who had approached the court against an August 2019 judgment by the Uttarakhand high court refusing to interfere with the order passed by President of India in exercise of its pardoning powers under Article 72 by which the death sentence was commuted to life with a rider that he would not be freed from jail till he attained 60 years in 2040.
His appeal in the top court was argued by senior advocate S Muralidhar who pointed out that at every stage, injustice was meted to the convict who kept telling the trial court, high court and Supreme Court that he was a minor at the time of committing the offence. The trial court convicted him in 2001 and dismissed his juvenility claim based on a bank cheque book and the account he held in the bank according to which his age was 20 years at the time of offence. This fact weighed with the HC and the Supreme Court when his appeals were dismissed in 2002.
He later preferred a review petition before the top court where he produced his school leaving certificate but the same was also dismissed in March 2003.
He then approached the Governor of Uttarakhand who refused to alter his sentence. He again approached the top court by filing a writ petition claiming that he was a minor. This petition also got dismissed in February 2005 but the court allowed him to file a curative petition. A year later, his curative petition was heard by the top court and dismissed in February 2006.
Interestingly, during the curative petition proceedings, the Uttarakhand government filed an affidavit accepting the convict’s age to be 14 years. It produced school records to show his date of birth to be January 4, 1980. Despite this admission, the curative plea was dismissed. The only remedy that remained for him was to knock the President’s doors which he did and got his death sentence commuted but failed to obtain release.
Justice Sundresh, writing the judgment for the bench, said, “The approach of the courts in the earlier round of litigation cannot be sustained in the eye of law... The court is expected to travel an extra mile to satisfy its conscience as to whether the case on hand would attract the provisions of the 2015 Act and, for the aforesaid purpose, the process enumerated thereunder will have to be necessarily followed.”
While setting aside the HC order refusing to interfere with the Presidential order, the bench clarified that its decision should not be construed as having interfered with the executive power of President. Rather, it said, “The issue that we are concerned with is the failure of the court in not applying the mandatory provisions of the 2015 Act with specific reference to the plea of juvenility. Therefore, it is not a review of the Presidential order, but a case of giving the benefit of the provisions of the 2015 Act to a deserving person.”
Realising that almost 25 years had gone by since the incident took place, the court directed the Uttarakhand State Legal Services Authority to play a “proactive role” in identifying welfare schemes to facilitate the rehabilitation and “smooth reintegration” of the appellant into the society upon his release.
The court said, “A child is a product of the present, in need of being moulded, to thrive in the future. Deviant behaviour of a child in conflict with law should be a concern of the society as a whole. One must not lose sight of the fact that the child is not responsible for an act of crime, but is rather victimized by it. Such a child is nothing but an inheritor of crime, a legacy which it does not wish to imbibe.”
The state government had argued that entertaining the petition would set a negative precedent as constitutional courts should not be seen as sitting in review over Presidential decision. The court said, “It must be kept in mind that the entire judicial system is meant for the discovery of the truth, it being the soul of a decision.... When procedural law stands in the way of the truth, the court must find a way to circumvent it.”
There would be no bar on the constitutional courts to consciously take a deeper look as doing so, is an act in fulfilment of a mandated duty upon courts to “give effect to the laudable objective of a social welfare legislation”.
The convict was a gardener in the house of a retired Army Colonel in Dehradun and had committed the murders by slashing the necks of the retired Colonel, his sister aged 65, a 27-year-old son. He also attacked the Colonel’s wife but she survived the attack. The state represented by advocate Vanshaja Shukla had pointed out to the brutality of the crime and the fact that he went absconding for almost five years till he was arrested with great difficulty in November 1999 from West Bengal, to justify his punishment.