NEW DELHI: Admitting that “injustice has been inflicted” by all courts, including itself, in rejecting the juvenility plea of a death convict who had to spent 25 years in jail, Supreme Court on Wednesday directed his release from prison forthwith by holding that he was just 14 years old at the time of committing the crime, a fact which was not accepted earlier by it in four rounds of litigations, manifesting that even SC is not infallible.
In this case, the accused was convicted and awarded the death sentence in 2001 in a murder case. He had raised the defence of juvenility by claiming to be just 14 year old and also placed bank account details, but his plea was rejected by the lower court. But his defence of juvenility was also not accepted by high court and Supreme Court.
Injustice inflicted by courts at every stage: SC
High court and Supreme Court upheld his conviction and sentence despite placing before them fresh evidence of school certificate for his age proof. SC not only rejected his appeal but also his review and curative petitions.
Staring at death, the convict was left with no option and he filed a mercy petition with Uttrakhand governor, which was rejected. He thereafter sought mercy from the President, who commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment in 2012 with a condition that he shall not be released until the attainment of 60 years of age.
The convict’s mother, with the help of a social worker, thereafter started a fresh round of litigation by challenging the presidential order in high court, which dismissed her plea and she approached Supreme Court, which examined the evidence relating to his age afresh and confessed the mistake done by the courts. During the pendency of the mercy plea, an ossification test was also done by a medical board constituted by Meerut jail on a request made by the convict and it also indicated that he was aged around 14 years at the time of the occurrence.
Noting all the judicial proceedings from trial court to SC in its order, a bench of Justices M M Sundresh and Aravind Kumar said, “The facts as narrated above speak for themselves. At every stage, injustice has been inflicted by the courts, either by ignoring the documents or by casting a furtive glance. The appellant, despite being illiterate, raised this plea one way or another, right from the trial court up to the conclusion of the curative petition before this court… The approach of courts in the earlier round of litigation cannot be sustained in the eye of law,” the bench said.
Writing the judgment for the bench, Justice Sundresh said that in case of a juvenile, the court is expected to play the role of parens patriae by treating a child not as a delinquent, but as a victim, viewed through the lens of reformation, rehabilitation and reintegration into the society.
“Thus, a juvenile court is a species of a parent. A delinquent who appears before the court is to be protected and re-educated, rather than be judged and punished. It is for this purpose that the court will have to press into service the benevolent provisions for rehabilitation introduced by the legislature. A juvenile court assumes the role of an institution rendering psychological services. It must forget that it is acting as a court, and must don the robes of a correction home for a deviant child,” the bench said.
“We would only state that 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 prison is normal, with no adverse report. He lost an opportunity to reintegrate into society. The time which he has lost, for no fault of his, can never be restored,” the court said, directing Uttarakhand State Legal Services Authority to play a proactive role in facilitating his rehabilitation and smooth reintegration into the society upon his release.
Emphasising that it is the primary duty of a court to make a single-minded endeavour to unearth the truth hidden beneath the facts, the bench said “the court is a search engine of truth, with procedural and substantive laws as its tools. When procedural law stands in the way of the truth, the court must find a way to circumvent it. Similarly, when substantive law, as it appears, does not facilitate the emergence of the truth, it is the paramount duty of the court to interpret the law in light of its teleos. Such an exercise is warranted in a higher degree, particularly while considering social welfare legislation.”
