Was he juvenile? Supreme Court orders test on 56-year-old lifer held 40 years ago

NEW DELHI: Quoting a more than 800-year-old Magna Carta on human rights, the Supreme Court on Monday directed fresh ossification test for a 56-year-old lifer as he claimed juvenility for the first time over 40 years after he was arrested for a murder in UP’s Fatehpur Sikri district on September 10, 1982.
The man was convicted by a Agra sessions court for murder in January 1986 and was sentenced to life imprisonment. His appeal was dismissed by the Allahabad HC on March 4, 2016, nearly 30 years after it was filed. The SC dismissed his appeal against the HC decision on August 16, 2016. The convict never raised the plea of juvenility during the 34 year-long meandering journey of the criminal litigation in the three-tier judiciary.
But, on the direction of the HC for release of lifers who have spent long years in jail, a medical board examined the convict and gave a report on December 10 last year that on September 10, 1982, the date of the crime, he could have been around 15 years of age.
Based on the report, the convict dug out a certain family register and moved the SC through advocate Rishi Malhotra to plead that he could not have been kept in jail as he was below 15 years of age at the time of crime. UP standing counsel Ardhendumauli Prasad argued that family registers were not admissible as evidence and that the convict had not produced any matriculation or school leaving certificate to support his juvenile claim.
A bench of Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and J B Pardiwala too had a hunch that the documents produced by the convict were not confidence inspiring. However, they felt that whatever little chance the convict had to prove his juvenility required another exam. In a 62-page judgment, Justice Pardiwala said, “Despite all the odds against the writ applicant, we’d still like to look into the matter in the larger interest of justice. It will be in fitness of things if the... convict is once again subjected to the ossification test.”