Supreme Court sets aside conviction of man who was a juvenile when crime occurred
A division bench held the High Court wrongly refused Section 482 relief on finality grounds, and set aside a Section 201 conviction the Juvenile Justice Board found belonged to a juvenile.
The Supreme Court has set aside the conviction of Mahavir alias Avnish under Section 201 Part II of the Indian Penal Code after a Juvenile Justice Board inquiry established that he was about 17 years old when the crime took place. The Court held that the High Court of Madhya Pradesh at Gwalior erred in refusing to reopen his conviction under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure on the ground that the judgment had attained finality.
Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra and Justice Shree Chandrashekhar, in a judgment authored by Justice Shree Chandrashekhar, found the High Court had committed an error of record and had acted “over cautiously.” The appellant, on bail, was discharged from the liability of his bail bonds.
How the dispute reached the Court
A crime under sections 302, 304B and 201 read with section 34 of the Indian Penal Code was registered on 17 September 2004 over the deaths of Bhuri and her infant daughter Guddi, whose bodies were found on a railway track near village Sikrauda in Morena district. The accused included Bhuri's father-in-law, mother-in-law, husband and two brothers-in-law, one of whom was the appellant.
At trial, family members and independent witnesses turned hostile. The charges of murder and dowry death were not proved. The trial Judge, relying on the testimony of PW1 Badri Baghel, convicted the accused under Section 201 Part II for causing disappearance of evidence by cremating the bodies. By judgment dated 21 December 2005, they were sentenced to three years' rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs.1000 each.
The High Court dismissed the appeal on 17 March 2017. The appellant's Special Leave Petition (Crl.) No. 4286 of 2018 was dismissed as withdrawn on 11 May 2018. He then moved the High Court under section 482 read with section 362 of the Code, seeking recall of the appellate judgment on the ground of juvenility.
Before the High Court, the appellant relied on his school marksheets recording his date of birth as 1 July 1987, and cited Abdul Razzaq v. State of U.P. and Pratap Singh v. State of Jharkhand for the propositions that a juvenility claim can be raised even after final disposal and must be decided with reference to the date of the offence.
The Board's unchallenged finding of juvenility
Pursuant to a High Court order, the Juvenile Justice Board, Morena conducted an inquiry. The appellant's father and school authorities confirmed his date of birth as 1 July 1987. The Board relied on his Class V and Class VIII marksheets and a birth certificate from Gram Panchayat Sikrauda. In its report dated 11 May 2019, the Board found that on the date of occurrence, 13 September 2004, the appellant was aged about 17 years, 2 months and 12 days, and thus a juvenile.
The Court noted that this finding was not challenged by the State. Despite it, the High Court dismissed the recall petition, holding that its inherent powers under Section 482 were preventive and corrective, not substitutive or appellate, and that the conviction had attained finality up to the Supreme Court.
The Court's correction of the finality error
The Supreme Court held that the High Court missed an important fact. The appellant's Special Leave Petition had been dismissed as withdrawn, not decided on merits. The co-accused Ramji Lal and Munni Devi, his parents, had their sentences reduced to the period already undergone in connected petitions heard the same day. The Court reasoned it did not appeal to common sense that the appellant would withdraw his petition without reason while his parents secured relief; he had stated on oath that he withdrew it to raise juvenility before the High Court.
On Section 362, the Court held that the inherent power of the High Court is not obliterated by the bar on review. Drawing on State of Karnataka v. M. Devendrappa, it noted that Section 482 confers no new power but saves inherent power the Court already possessed. The Court distinguished a substantive review from a procedural review and recall, citing Asit Kumar Kar, Davinder Pal Singh Bhullar and Ganesh Patel, holding that an order suffering from lack of jurisdiction, or a mistake causing prejudice, can be recalled.
Quoting A.R. Antulay, the Court reiterated that “no man should suffer because of the mistake of the Court.” Where a juvenile was denied a statutory benefit and grave prejudice resulted, the High Court had power to remedy the situation.
Why the Section 201 conviction could not stand
The Court found a further error in the conviction itself. The appellant's acquittal on the charges under sections 302 and 304B was never challenged before the High Court. With murder and dowry death unproved, a conviction under Section 201 Part II required a finding that a crime was committed and that the accused, knowing or having reason to believe so, caused evidence to disappear to screen the offender. Relying on Suleman Rehiman Mulani and Kedar Nath, the Court held the conviction illegal.
The judgment traced the evolution of juvenile justice law, from the Juvenile Justice Act, 1986 through the JJA 2000 and JJA 2015, and stressed the Court's role as parens patriae in giving purposive effect to child welfare legislation. It observed that the rise in belated juvenility pleas reflects a gap in the understanding of the law among stakeholders.
Order
The Court set aside the conviction under Section 201 Part II of the Indian Penal Code as illegal. Consequently, the judgment of conviction and sentence dated 21 December 2005 in Sessions Case No. 129 of 2005, passed by the 2nd Additional Sessions Judge, Morena, was set aside as against the appellant. The appellant, on bail, was discharged from his bail bonds, and the appeal was allowed.