The Supreme Court on juvenile justice ruled that in the absence of reliable school or birth records, courts can determine juvenility using an ossification test, allowing a two-year margin of error. This ensures fair age determination in long-pending cases.
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NEW DELHI: In a landmark judgment reinforcing the principles of juvenile justice and sentencing fairness, the Supreme Court of India has granted the benefit of juvenility to one of the appellants in a 1988 murder case, while also reducing the sentence of three remaining convicts from life imprisonment to a fixed term of 14 years of actual imprisonment.
The ruling came from a Bench comprising Justice Rajesh Bindal and Justice Manmohan, which applied the legally accepted two-year margin of error in age determination through medical examination.
Background of the Case
The appeals arose from the Patna High Court’s judgment dated December 14, 2017, affirming the conviction of eight individuals for offences under:
- Section 302/149 IPC – Murder with common object
- Section 323/149 IPC – Voluntarily causing hurt
The case pertains to an incident in Gaya district on August 30, 1988, where a violent assault led to the death of a victim. The Trial Court (Additional Sessions Judge I, Gaya) had awarded life imprisonment to eight accused. During the pendency of the appeal before the High Court, the cases of three accused abated due to their deaths. The High Court eventually upheld the conviction of the remaining suspects.
Issues Before the Supreme Court
Whether Appellant No. 2, Ganesh Yadav, a juvenile on the date of the incident?
Whether the life imprisonment of the remaining accused could be reduced to a fixed term due to long passage of time and other mitigating circumstances?
Arguments of the Parties
Appellants
The appellants contended that Appellant Nos. 1 and 2 were minors at the time of the incident and, therefore, entitled to the benefit of the Juvenile Justice Act. They submitted that although they were not disputing the conviction, the long passage of time, more than 35 years since the incident, should persuade the court to show leniency in sentencing.
It was argued that the appellants had behaved responsibly during incarceration, without any adverse conduct, and that, in light of the judgment in Shiva Kumar @ Shiva @ Shivamurthy v. State of Karnataka (2023), the sentence of life imprisonment could lawfully be converted into a fixed term.
State
Opposing the plea, the State argued that none of the appellants deserved leniency given the gravity of the offence. The State took the position that neither the claim of juvenility nor the request for sentence reduction should be entertained and that the punishment already imposed ought to stand unaltered.
Court’s Analysis
Determination of Juvenility
As the plea of juvenility was raised for the first time, the Supreme Court directed the Trial Court to conduct an inquiry. No authentic documentary proof of age was available for Appellant No. 2, Ganesh Yadav, which resulted in an ossification test by a Medical Board on 3 March 2020, estimating his age as 19 years.
The Court cited the seminal judgment in Jaya Mala v. Home Secretary, Government of Jammu & Kashmir (1982) and reproduced its observation:
“However, it is notorious and one can take judicial notice that the margin of error in age ascertained by radiological examination is two years on either side.”
Applying this principle, the Bench held that:
“Giving benefit of two years to Appellant No.2/Ganesh Yadav from the age determined by the ossification test, he can be said to be 17 years of age on the date of commission of offence.”
Accordingly, he was declared a juvenile at the time of the offence.
However, regarding Appellant No. 1, Umesh Yadav, the Bench declined the plea, noting:
“Admittedly he is the elder brother of Appellant No.2. Therefore, the age of Umesh Yadav will be more than that and hence he cannot be treated as juvenile.”
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Modification of Sentence
The Court considered the submission that more than three decades had passed since the incident and that the surviving appellants were elderly. It was observed that Appellant No. 3, Baleshwar Pandit, was 67 years old and Appellant No. 4, Muneshwar Pandit, was 59 years old and that there had been no complaints regarding conduct during incarceration.
The Bench concluded:
“…in our opinion, the sentence awarded to the three of them can be modified to a fixed term of 14 years of actual imprisonment.”
Ganesh Yadav (Appellant No. 2) was declared a juvenile at the time of the crime. Since Section 18 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act permits a maximum of 3 years of detention, and he had already served more than 8 years, the Court held that
“he deserves to be released immediately unless required in any other case.”
For Appellant Nos. 1, 3 and 4, the conviction for offences under Sections 302/149 and 323/149 IPC was upheld, but the sentence was modified to a fixed term of 14 years of actual imprisonment. The Court recorded that the appeal of Appellant No. 5 (Jitan Yadav) had already been dismissed in 2018.
Case Title:
Umesh Yadav & Ors. v. The State of Bihar
Criminal Appeal No. 1072 of 2018
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