Abdul Razzaq v. State of U.P.
Background
Abdul Razzaq was convicted under Section 302 IPC and sentenced to life imprisonment for a 1979 murder in Firozabad, Uttar Pradesh; his conviction was affirmed by the Allahabad High Court in 2000, and his Supreme Court special leave petition and subsequent review petition were both dismissed. Years later, following a suo motu direction by the Allahabad High Court in an unrelated PIL, the Juvenile Justice Board, Agra examined his case and held that he had actually been under 18 years of age on the date of the offence, prompting this application for his release.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that a person who was a juvenile at the time of the offence can claim the benefit of the Juvenile Justice Act at any time, even after conviction has become final, and recalled its own earlier orders dismissing the special leave petition and review petition to the extent necessary to entertain this application. Relying on settled law that Section 7-A requires only the sentence (not the underlying conviction) to be set aside when juvenility is established post-conviction, the Court left the conviction undisturbed but set aside the sentence of life imprisonment, directing that the petitioner be released from custody forthwith unless required in any other case.
Lesson Learnt
A genuine claim of juvenility at the time of an offence can be raised and succeed at any stage, even decades after a conviction has become final and all ordinary appellate remedies are exhausted, though the law requires only the sentence, not the conviction itself, to be undone.