After being in jail for 37 years, man moves SC to set aside conviction

After being in jail for more than 37 years as part of life imprisonment in a murder case, a man has now approached the Supreme Court to set aside his conviction, claiming he was juvenile at the time of incident in 1979.

Armed with a school leaving certificate, Vijay Pal, now aged 57, contended before a bench of Justices S A Bobde and L Nageswara Rao that he could not have been tried under the Indian Penal Code.

The certificate issued by his school headmaster of a primary school in Hardoi in Uttar Pradesh indicated that he was 16 years, 11 months and nine days old on June 11, 1979, when the offence took place.

Since the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act allowed one to raise the question of juvenility at any stage of trial and even after final disposal of the matter, he has seen a flicker of hope of coming out of jail.

Lodged in Fatehgarh jail in Uttar Pradesh, Vijay sent a letter through Superintendent of jail to assistant registrar, the Supreme Court, pointing out the irregularity in his trial.

The top court appointed advocate Dipak Kumar Jena as amicus curiae to represent the case of the petitioner.

Jena submitted before the court that the petitioner was below 18 years of age at the time of the incident as the date of birth recorded in his school leaving certificate mentioned it as July 2, 1962.

"As the petitioner belonged to the very poor family, he dropped out of school at Class V. The trial court as well as the high court tried and sentenced him under the IPC. The courts did not give him benefit of Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act," the counsel contended.

The apex court issued a notice to the Uttar Pradesh government and sought its response within four weeks.

The petitioner along with others were tried for murdering one Mahadev by beheading and a severed body was recovered seven days after the incident.

On December 20, 1980, the trial court convicted all the accused and sentenced them to life term.The Allahabad High Court dismissed their appeal on September 4, 2003.

A year later on September 3, 2004, the top court also rejected the plea filed by the other accused against the judgement.