Karan @ Fatiya vs The State of Madhya Pradesh (2023): Crl.A. Nos. 572-573 of 2019
Background
The appellant was convicted by the trial court for kidnapping, rape (under Section 376(2)(i) IPC and the POCSO Act), murder, and destruction of evidence relating to a 2017 incident, and was sentenced to death; the Madhya Pradesh High Court confirmed both conviction and death sentence. While his appeal was pending in the Supreme Court, he claimed for the first time that he had been a minor (juvenile) on the date of the offence. The Supreme Court directed the trial court to hold an inquiry into his actual age, and that inquiry (based on school records including a government primary school's date-of-birth certificate, mark sheets, and testimony of teachers) conclusively found his date of birth to be 25 July 2002, making him 15 years, 4 months and 20 days old on the date of the offence (15 December 2017), i.e., a "child" below 16 years under the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015.
Decision Breakdown
The Court rejected the State's demand for an ossification (bone) test, holding that such tests only give an approximate age with a margin of error of 1-2 years and cannot override a properly proved school birth certificate, especially since the State had not objected to or cross-examined the evidence during the trial court's inquiry. Interpreting Section 9(3) of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, the Court held that when a person is later found to have been a child at the time of the offence, only the sentence passed by the regular court becomes ineffective: the conviction itself remains valid, since the law does not require the trial to be treated as void merely because the accused turns out to have been a minor. Because the appellant was under 16 at the time of a heinous offence, the maximum punishment permissible under Section 18 of the 2015 Act was three years in a special home, and since he had already spent more than five years in custody, his continued incarceration was illegal. The Court therefore upheld the conviction but set aside the sentence (including the death sentence), and (since he was now over 20 years old, making referral to the Juvenile Justice Board pointless) ordered his immediate release.
Lesson Learnt
A juvenility claim can be raised at any stage of a criminal case, even after conviction and confirmation of a death sentence, and if proved by reliable school records it does not wipe out the conviction itself but caps the punishment at what the Juvenile Justice Act allows for a child, meaning someone who has already served beyond that capped period must be released, regardless of how serious the crime.