[Pramila vs. State of Chhattisgarh] The Supreme Court of India recently acquitted an accused person in a murder case that occurred in the year 2000. The court came to the conclusion that the accused person was younger than 18 years old at the time of the incident.
The appellant, Pramila, was a juvenile at the time of the event, and she was 17 years old at the time. According to a bench consisting of Justices Abhay S. Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan, the appellant should have been dealt with in accordance with Section 21 of the Juvenile Justice Act.
A boy who has not yet reached the age of sixteen years or a girl who has not yet reached the age of eighteen years is considered a “juvenile” according to the definition that is provided in clause (h) of Section 2 of the Juvenile Justice Act as of 1986. Therefore, the appellant was a minor at the time that the offence was committed—the date of the offence. As a result, the appellant should have been dealt with according to Section 21 of the JJ Act of 1986. The court stated that the highest action that could have been taken against the appellant was to place her in a special home rather than any other circumstance.
In the case of a young lady who was sixteen years old, she had the option of being placed in a special home for a period of time that was at least three years. One of the provisions of the Minor Justice Act of 1986, Section 22(1), stated that it was against the law to sentence a minor to serve time in jail. According to the Court’s subsequent statement, Section 16 of the JJ Act of 2000 contains a provision that is comparable to this one.
It was also taken into consideration that the woman had already served eight years of her life sentence and that sending her case to the Juvenile Justice Board at this point would be pointless and would not accomplish anything productive.
Consequently, it granted the appeal and issued an order for her release.
The accused was convicted in 2003 of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Chhattisgarh High Court issued a confirmation of the same in 2010, and the Supreme Court accepted the accused’s appeal in 2012.
Before the Supreme Court, the accused entered a plea of ‘juvenility’ which was accepted.
After that, the bench searched through the documents to determine her date of birth and discovered that she was 17 years old at the time of the murder.
“The appellant was a minor at the time that the offence was committed,” the court told the appellant.The highest remedy that might have been taken against the appellant consisted of sending her to a special home,” it observed before setting aside the life sentence and conviction.
A group of attorneys, including senior advocates Rajesh Pandey and Sumant Bharadwaj, as well as advocates Abhishek Pandey, Mahesh Pandey, Chandrika Prasad Mishra, Prashant Kumar Umrao, Nishi Prabha Singh, Prashasti Singh, Swati Surbhi, Mahesh Kumar Tiwari, Lalit Allawadhi, Mridula Ray Bharadwaj, and Tanay Hari Har Lal, appeared on the woman’s behalf.
The attorneys Gautam Narayan, Asmita Singh, Harshit Goel, KV Vibu Prasad, and Sujay Jain were in charge of representing the Chhattisgarh government.
Read the order: