NEW DELHI: Just four days short of turning 18, a youth crushed a 32-year-old marketing executive under the wheels of his Mercedes in 2016. But “bound by law”, the Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that he will not spend even a day in jail. The accused will be tried as a juvenile and, if held guilty, sent to an observation home.
The juvenile in question was charged under Section 304 of the IPC for culpable homicide not amounting to murder under which the maximum punishment is life term or up to 10 years in jail, but no minimum punishment is prescribed. Victim Siddharth Sharma’s sister filed an appeal against Delhi High Court’s ruling which said since no minimum sentence is specified for the offence in question, the case does not fall within the ambit of Section 2(33) of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015.
Under this section, a juvenile can be tried as an adult only in cases of ‘heinous’ offences where the minimum punishment is seven years in jail. The top court said as the JJ Act does not deal with offence where the maximum sentence is more than seven years’ imprisonment; but when no minimum sentence or minimum sentence of less than 7 years is provided, it shall not be treated as serious offences and dealt with accordingly till Parliament takes the call. “When two interpretations are possible, the one in the benefit of juveniles has to be adopted,” said a bench of Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose.