The HC will hear the plea next on January 13. Observing that “the applicant is barely 20 years old and deserves a chance for reformation”, the Bombay High Court, ‘as an experiment to reform,’ granted interim bail to a Pune man who is currently lodged at Yerawada prison for sexually assaulting a minor boy.
The court noted that the 20-year-old was earlier involved in two different offences including outraging a woman’s modesty and directed him to continue counselling by clinical psychologists from the Sassoon Hospital in Pune.
A single judge bench of Justice Bharati H Dangre on December 22 passed the order on the bail plea by the man, arrested in February this year.
Applicant filed the bail plea and sought to be released in view of his young age. He has been lodged in Yerawada Jail from February 10 this year. The court said that long incarceration of the young applicant may turn him into a ‘hardened criminal’.
