- The Hon’ble Supreme Court (SC or Court) has upheld the decision of the Rajasthan High Court(HC) in the case of Manoj @ Monu @ Vishal Chaudhary v State of Haryana has held that the plea juvenility must be raised in a bonafide and truthful manner.
- Appeal before the SC was filed challenging an order passed by the Punjab and Haryana HC which set aside the plea of the Appellant as juvenile in conflict with law and ordered the Appellant to stand trial as an adult.
- Citing the judgment of the Court in an earlier case of BablooPasi, the Court remarked that whilst the provisions of the statute are to be interpreted liberally, benefit cannot be granted to the appellant who has approached the Court with untruthful statement.
- Relevant facts are that appellant was accused of waylaying a car and snatching cash worth 22 lakhs from the occupants of the car and causing the death of another occupant due to the bullet fired on him.
- During the pendency of trial, the appellant moved an application claiming he was a juvenile as on the date of the mishap by relying upon his school records. The Learned Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) accepted the plea and declared him to be a juvenile.
- The age of the accused as on date of incident as per the Ossification Test report was 16 years 8 months and 5 days but the age assessed by the doctor’s report was 23-24 years.
- The HC set aside an order passed by the ASJ and declared the accused as juvenile in conflict with law. Reliance was upon the family register prepared under The U.P. Panchayat Raj (Maintenance of Family Register) Rules, 1970 to hold that the plea of juvenility cannot be allowed.
- The HC observed that appellant has relied on three documents viz, Birth Certificate; School leaving Certificate and the Report of the Ossification Test in support of his plea of being a juvenile.
- Since the date of birth was registered after the filing of the application under Section 7A of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000 (Act), it could not be relied upon owing to the time gap between birth and registration.
- Given the above, the school leaving certificate was also unreliable and since the certificate is only a procured document for proving juvenility before the court.
- The Court further noted that ossification test varies based on individual characteristics and hence its reliability had to be examined on a case-to-case basis. On Family register, it was observed that it was a question of fact as to how much evidentiary value is to be attached to the family register, but to say that it is entirely not relevant would not be the correct enunciation of law.
- Analysing all of the above, the Court concluded by observing that the appellant sought to relied upon juvenility only on the basis of school leaving record in his application. However, such school record was not reliable and seemed to be procured only to support the plea of juvenility.
- Further, the appellant did not referto his birth certificate in the application as it was obtained subsequently.
- Given the above, the Court held that the plea of juvenility has to be raised in a bonafide and truthful manner. If the reliance is on a document to seek juvenility which is not reliable or dubious in nature, the appellant cannot be treated to be juvenile keeping in view that the Act is a beneficial legislation.
- Dismissing the appeal, the SC held that the view taken by the HC is a possible view in law and such view does not call for any interference in the instant case.
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