Gurgaon school murder case: Punjab and Haryana HC dismisses accused’s plea challenging order to try him as adult

Hearing the plea, the bench of Justice Anoop Chitkara held that the accused was born on April 3, 2001, and the age remains undisputed. On the date of the alleged incident on September 8, 2017, the age of the minor accused was around 16 years and 5 months, thus, he was between the age bracket of 16 to 18. Despite being a minor, given the legislative mandate under Section 15 of the JJ Act, the offence being heinous (i.e. murder) and the child having completed 16 years of age, the Juvenile Justice Board was under legal obligation to conduct a preliminary assessment on the child’s mental and physical capacity to commit such offence and his ability to understand its consequences and also circumstances of such commission of the offence.

After considering the Social Investigation Report (SIR), mental assessment report, physical report and interaction with the child, the board opined that the child needed to be tried as an adult and consequently transferred the matter under Section 18(3) to the children’s court, the jurisdiction court.

“The social investigation report (SIR) and the interaction with the board did not find any factor which would undermine his mental or physical capacity or the family circumstances or that as the child was abused. The Juvenile Justice Board has strictly adhered to all the directions passed by the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India while deciding the matter afresh. In the appeal, the Sessions Court also dealt with each and every aspect of the matter in detail by referring to the legal provisions. At the time of adjudication of the present criminal revision petition, neither the appreciation of prima facie factor, nor application of law would lead to any other conclusion except that the child-in-conflict with law had to be treated as an adult,” the high court said.

Given that the child’s age was under 18 years, the high court said that it exercises restraint in not adhering to the manner in which the child was murdered. Further stating that the impugned order suffers from no illegality, and is rather in tune with the directions of the Supreme Court and passed in the light of provisions of the JJ Act and called for no interference, the high court dismissed the plea.

Earlier, a court had barred the media from using the name of the accused and asked it to use fictitious names instead. While the victim was named ‘Prince’, the juvenile accused was named ‘Bholu’ and the school was referred to as ‘Vidyalaya’.