Minor in Pune Porsche case lodged at British era ‘reformatory school’, now observation home

On Wednesday night, the Pune Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) remanded the minor to the juvenile observation home until June 5. “He is lodged with other juvenile inmates of the observation home. While it has separate cells for those whose trial is on and those whose cases have been decided, all inmates do their routine activities together,” an official from the home said.

The observation home was designated a reformatory school between April 1889 and April 1936. It was redesignated as an industrial school from 1936 to 1989. In February 1990, it was turned into a care home for destitute children, until it became an observation home for juveniles in conflict with law in 2009.

Officials said that currently, the establishment has a sanctioned capacity of 100 children under three heads – observation home for children detained for various crimes with a capacity of 50; a special home for children held for serious crimes with a capacity of 25; and a care and protection home for destitute children with a capacity of 25.

However, with limited resources, at any given time, the establishment houses less than 40 children in the observation home and special home categories at any time, and no children under the care home category. As of Wednesday, the facility has 36 juveniles.

The facility only admits boys between 14 and 18 years of age. There is a separate facility for girls, and children below this age group are processed into separate facilities.

In the Porsche crash case, the JJB is expected to rule at a later date on the police application to try the minor as an adult, after completion of various procedures stipulated under the Juvenile Justice Act.

Aneesh Awadhiya and Ashwani Koshta, engineers working in Pune’s Kalyani Nagar area, were killed after the speeding Porsche car, with the 17-and-a-half-year-old son of a Pune realtor at the wheel, knocked down their motorcycle in the Yerawada area early on Sunday.

Following his detention after the accident on Sunday, the minor was produced before the JJB in Pune on the afternoon of May 19. The police had sought his custody in the juvenile observation home and had also appealed that he be tried as an adult. The JJB, which consisted of just one non-judicial member on Sunday instead of its full strength of three including one judicial member, had rejected both applications and had granted bail to the accused on various conditions, including writing an essay, studying traffic safety norms and undergoing de-addiction counselling.

The Pune police had then challenged this JJB order in the Pune district court which had referred the matter back to the JJB to be decided again as per the provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act.