Even if the maximum jail sentence for juvenile offenders in murder cases is three years only, a man, spent 14 years in jail for the offence and has now been set free by the Delhi high court.
Satpal, who was acquitted of all the charges by a division bench comprising Justices B.D. Ahmed and Manmohan Singh, had killed Kamla Kakkar, the wife of a practising lawyer in south Delhi in 1990.
Pulling up the police, lawyers and the trial court for not pursuing the case under the Juvenile Justice Act, the division bench observed, “We feel that trial courts should be vigilant whenever a claim of juvenility is made before them.”
The division bench passed the remark after hearing from the amicus curiae (friend of the court) Ajay Verma, that the convict, Satpal was aged 15-16 years when he killed Kamla Kakkar, wife of a practising lawyer in south Delhi. But it was an irony that he had to spent 14 years in jail for his crime, even though he was a minor at the time of the crime. A lower court had in 2007 sentenced Satpal to rigorous life imprisonment for the murder.
Satpal had challenged the trial court’s order in the Delhi HC, which has allowed his appeal and set him free of all the charges.
Pulling up the trial court for not considering the age of Satpal, who was a minor when the crime took place, Justices Ahmed and Singh said, “The convict was a juvenile ... but (was) not treated as such and (he) suffered incarceration far in excess of the maximum period permitted under the act”.