Juvenile defence can be made even after 22 years: Allahabad HC

Lucknow: In a significant decision, the Lucknow division of the Allahabad High Court held that a person can assert juvenility during the trial even after 22 years have passed.

The Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) has been given permission by the bench to accept a plea on behalf of a woman who was a minor in 2000 when her sister-in-law's death due to dowry occurred.

She had alleged that she was falsely implicated in the dowry-death case when she was only 13 years old.

Thereafter, she married and was living with her husband. Now the chief judicial magistrate, Sitapur, has issued a non-bailable warrant against her in the case.

When she filed her plea of being juvenile at the time of the incident, seeking to transfer her case to the JJB, the CJM rejected the plea on December 7, 2022, saying that the plea was raised after 22 years.

Setting aside the CJM order, the bench observed that there was no time limit fixed for moving the plea of juvenility in the case.

“The intent of the legislature is very clear from bare reading of the provisions of Section 7(A) of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, which permits the accused to take the plea of being juvenile at the time of the incident, seeking benefit of the Act at any stage of the case, may it be pre-trial, trial or even appeal,” a bench of Justice Shree Prakash Singh said recently.

With this observation, the bench has set aside the order of a lower court and asked the petitioner to file her plea of juvenility along with the certified order in the said court which would decide it within the next 45 days.

With PTI inputs