{"id":1461,"date":"2024-02-08T13:20:35","date_gmt":"2024-02-08T07:50:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/?p=1461"},"modified":"2024-02-08T13:20:35","modified_gmt":"2024-02-08T07:50:35","slug":"supreme-court-acquits-woman-who-was-juvenile-at-the-time-of-offence-after-23-years-of-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/supreme-court-acquits-woman-who-was-juvenile-at-the-time-of-offence-after-23-years-of-murder\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme court acquits woman who was juvenile at the time of offence after 23 years of murder"},"content":{"rendered":"

PRAMILA\u00a0 [<\/strong>APPELLANT(S)]\u00a0 Vs.\u00a0 <\/strong>STATE OF CHHATTISGARH\u00a0 [<\/strong>RESPONDENT(S)]<\/h1>\n

CRIMINAL APPEAL NO(S). 64\/2012<\/p>\n

(2JB, ABHAY S.OKA and UJJAL BHUYAN JJ., delivered by ABHAY S.OKA J<\/strong>.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Facts:<\/u><\/strong> The appellant has taken an exception to the judgment and order dated 3rd May, 2010 passed by the Division Bench of the High Court of Chhattisgarh. The appellant herein was the second appellant before the High Court. The appellant was convicted for the offences punishable under Sections 302 and 201 read with Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 and sentenced to undergo life imprisonment.<\/p>\n

Issue:<\/u><\/strong> Whether the appellant in this case is liable to undergo sentence of life imprisonment?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Arguments on behalf of counsel for appellants:<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

The issue of juvenility was raised by the appellant in this Appeal during the course of hearing by filing an interlocutory application. Therefore, vide order dated 13th September, 2023, this Court directed the Sessions Court to hold an enquiry into that aspect of issue of juvenility. In terms of the order of this Court, the learned 1st Additional Sessions Judge, Ramanujganj, District Balrampur, Chhattisgarh, has submitted a finding dated 30th October, 2023, which records that the date of birth of the 1 appellant is 1st September, 1982 and, therefore, on 15th June, 2000, which is the date of the occurrence of the offence, the age of the appellant was 17 years, 09 months and 14 days. The statements of the witnesses as well as the documents produced on record during the inquiry have been forwarded to the Court.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Held:<\/u><\/strong> The court allowed the present appeal and held that, \u201cwe have to proceed on the footing that on the date on which the incident constituting the offence took place, the age of the appellant was less than 18 years. The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000 (for short, \u201cthe 2000 JJ Act\u201d) was admittedly not in force when the incident occurred. Therefore, the case will be governed by the Juvenile Justice Act, 1986 (for short, \u201cthe 1986 JJ Act\u201d). Under clause (h) of Section 2 of the 1986 JJ Act, a \u2018juvenile\u2019 has been defined to mean a boy who has not attained the age of sixteen years or a girl who has not attained the age of eighteen years. Thus, on the date of occurrence of the offence, the appellant was a juvenile. Therefore, the appellant ought to have been dealt with in accordance with Section 21 of the 1986 JJ Act. The maximum action which could have been taken against the appellant was of sending her to a special home. In the case of a girl of sixteen years of age, she could have been sent to a special home for a period of not less than three years. As per Section 22(1) of the 1986 JJ Act, there was a prohibition on sentencing a juvenile to undergo imprisonment. There is a similar provision under Section 16 of the 2000 JJ Act.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PRAMILA\u00a0 [APPELLANT(S)]\u00a0 Vs.\u00a0 STATE OF CHHATTISGARH\u00a0 [RESPONDENT(S)] CRIMINAL APPEAL NO(S). 64\/2012 (2JB, ABHAY S.OKA and UJJAL BHUYAN JJ., delivered by ABHAY S.OKA J.)   Facts: The appellant has taken an exception to the judgment and order dated 3rd May, 2010 passed by the Division Bench of the High Court of Chhattisgarh. The appellant herein was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-judgement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1461"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1465,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461\/revisions\/1465"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}