Govt asked to compensate juvenile over long jail term

Apr 02, 2011 |

Age Correspondent

New Delhi

The Delhi high court has ordered the city government to pay `5 lakh as damages to a juvenile delinquent who has been languishing in jail for over eight years after his conviction by a sessions court in a murder case although the law prescribes no more than three years of detention of such persons.

“The accused juvenile suffered incarceration for over 8 years, i.e. nearly three times the maximum period prescribed under the (Juvenile Justice) Act,” remarked a division bench comprising Justices S. Ravindra Bhat and G.P. Mittal after noting that the juvenile has been languishing in jail for adults for so long.
A sessions court in 2004 had convicted the juvenile along with one Subhash without heeding to the boy’s defence that he was a juvenile at the time of the incident and sentenced them to life imprisonment for the murder of Mahesh.
The juvenile had moved the Delhi HC stating that the jail sentence should be scrapped as he was a minor when Mahesh was murdered. “The facts reveal an extremely disturbing picture pointing to wholesale violation of the procedure established by the law,” said the bench.

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