Achi news desk-
The minor, who crushed two engineers with a Porsche car in Yerwada, Pune late on the night of May 18, appeared before the Juvenile Justice Board on Wednesday. The Youth Board canceled the bail of the accused minor and sent him to a youth home until June 5. on Sunday
.
After this, people’s anger exploded on social media. Maharashtra Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis arrived in Pune on Tuesday. He held a meeting with police officers. After this, in the application given to the Youth Board, the police have given the age of the accused as 17 years and 8 months and asked to be treated as an adult.
Can a case be tried against a minor accused as an adult? In Bhaskar Explainer, you will know the answers to 6 such important questions related to this case…
Question 1: What has happened so far in the case of the Pune Porsche car accident?
answer: On the evening of Saturday the 18th of May, a minor from Pune arrived at the Kosi Pub restaurant with his friends at 10:40pm. They had all gone to a party to celebrate passing 12th. According to police officer Manoj Patil, the restaurant stopped service at 12:10pm.
After depositing the bill of Rs 48,000, the minor reached another pub called Black Marriott. While returning home after a party at around 2.15 in the night, his speeding Porsche car hit a bike hard in Yerwada area.
The accused minor was traveling in the same Porsche car without a number plate.
Anish Awadiya and his friend Ashwini Costa, who were riding the bike, died on the spot. According to eyewitnesses, the girl riding the bike jumped several feet in the air and fell to the ground. After the collision, the Porsche collided with another car parked nearby. The accused driver was saved when the airbag deployed, but bystanders caught him and handed him over to the police.
Apart from the accused driver, the Yerwada police have arrested 5 people in this case including his father, a pub owner, a dealer who gave the car without a number. The court has sent the minor driver to police custody until May 24 to question his father.
According to Pune Police, a case has been registered in this matter under FIR number 306/24 at Yerwada police station. A case has been registered against the accused driver under 2 sections of IPC…
- A case of drunken driving has been registered under section 185 of the IPC.
- A case of IPC section 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) has been registered.
The accused driver, aged 17 years and 8 months, told the police that his father knew about driving without a licence. His father has also been arrested on this basis.
The police have filed a case against the father of the accused under Section 75 of the Juvenile Justice Act ie willful neglect of a child and Section 77 of supplying alcoholic beverages or drugs to a child. Apart from this, Section 199A of the Motor Vehicles Act has also been added in this case.
After the accident, people caught the minor and his friend and beat them.
Question 2: Under what conditions did the court grant bail to the 17-year-old accused?
answer: On Sunday, the police produced the accused minor in the Juvenile Justice Court, where he was granted bail within 5 hours. The court set 5 main conditions while granting bail to the accused…
- The boy will have to work with the traffic police in Yerwada for 15 days. Also, after understanding the traffic rules, a report will have to be prepared and submitted to the RTO.
- An essay on road accidents must be written in 300 words.
- The habit of drinking alcohol will have to be treated by a psychiatrist and he will also have to undergo counselling.
- If he sees any accident in the future, he will have to help the victims of the accident.
- A personal bond of Rs 7500 and another surety bond will have to be filled.
Seeing the people’s anger over these conditions on social media and elsewhere, the Maharashtra Police has filed a review petition under Section 104 of the Juvenile Justice Act and said that the accused minor should be sent to home observation or his remand The Youth Board has received this demand from the police. The minor accused has been sent to Nehru Industries Center Observation Home in Yerwada till June 5.
At the same time, there was no debate on Wednesday on the demand to try the accused minor as an adult. The board can give its decision on this later.
According to the police, if the Youth Justice Board refuses to try the accused driver again as an adult, then the case will be challenged in the higher court.
Before the accident, in the CCTV footage from the pub, the minor was drinking alcohol with his friends and driving away in a car while drunk.
Question 3: Can this 17-year-old accused be considered an adult and prosecuted?
answer: Yes, this can happen in horrific cases. In Pune, the accused first consumed alcohol and then ran over two people with a speeding car. The police have also filed a petition in this case to try the accused driver as an adult, but to understand where the case is stuck legally, let us know about the Juvenile Justice Act…
There was a law in the country under the Juvenile Justice Act 1986 for minors who committed crimes up to the age of 16. This law was changed in the year 2000 and the age limit was increased from 16 years to 18 years. Minors committing murder, treason and deadly assaults were also considered young offenders and action was taken against them under the Juvenile Justice Act.
In December 2012, one of the accused in the Delhi Nirbhaya rape case was 17 years old. This accused, who committed this heinous crime, was kept in a juvenile home. A case was registered against the rest of the criminals under sections of the IPC. People were very angry because of this.
The then Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi formed a committee headed by former Justice JS Verma to change this law. However, this committee opposed lowering the age limit from 18 to 16 under Youth Justice.
In 2015, this law was changed keeping in mind the recommendations of the Justice Verma Committee. A new CCL provision ie ‘Conflict of Law’ has been added to this law. Under this, if a minor commits a heinous crime then he can be treated as an adult, but the court will have the right to decide this.
In the case of a heinous crime, the accused can be sentenced to a maximum of 7 years. However, this will not apply to all petty criminals.
Anish Awadhiya and Ashwini Koshta died on the spot after colliding with the car.
Question 4: In what type of crimes is a minor treated as an adult and prosecuted?
answer: Section 15 of the Youth Justice Act states that when a child aged 16 or over commits a heinous crime such as murder, rape, murderous assault, etc., the Youth Justice Board will decide whether he should be treated as a minor age or not. .
The Youth Justice Board decides this after looking at the offense and the manner in which it was committed. The JJ Board examines these things when deciding…
- What was the intention of the accused at the time of committing the crime?
- What is his physical ability?
- How much does he understand about the consequences of crime?
- What were the circumstances at the time of the crime?
Under Section 18(3) of this law, if the Youth Justice Board recommends that the minor be tried as an adult, then the court holds a further hearing based on evidence.
After changes in the Juvenile Justice Act, the only minor accused in the Nirbhaya rape case was sentenced to 3 years imprisonment on 1 September 2013. Juvenile Justice had considered the offense of the minor accused as a heinous crime or a crime horrible. He was the only accuser related to this case, whose name and face were not revealed to the world.
The father of the accused minor has been arrested by the police from Aurangabad, Maharashtra.
Question 5: If the case is tried as an adult, then how much punishment can be given to the accused?
answer: The police have filed a petition and are demanding that the Youth Justice Board prosecute the accused as an adult. If the court gives its consent, then the accused will be prosecuted for culpable homicide. If convicted, he can face a maximum of 7 years in prison. The court will decide on the punishment considering the seriousness of the crime.
Question 6: Has this ever happened before, when a minor has been considered an adult?
answer: Yes, there are many such cases. Here we know of 4 such cases where the accused were minors who committed heinous crimes…
1. Gang rape of an 8-year-old girl in Kathua
People from all over the country including Jammu and Kashmir took to the streets to demand justice for the victim in the Kathua gangrape case.
This is the year 2018. Seven people, including a minor, have been charged in the case of gangrape and murder of an 8-year-old girl in Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir. In November 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that the minor offender should be tried as an adult. In its decision, the Supreme Court had also expressed concern over the rise in youth crime in India. This case is currently under trial in the Pathankot sessions court.
2. A 7-year-old child is murdered by slitting his throat in a Gurugram school
Seven-year-old Pradyumna’s body was found in a school washroom at Ryan International School in Gurugram.
In 2017, a seven-year-old child was murdered by slitting his throat in a school in Gurugram, Haryana. In this case, CBI had found a minor student of class 11 in the same school guilty. In view of the brutality of the crime, in October 2022, the Youth Court had said that the case against the accused should be tried as an adult. Just three days after this decision, the Supreme Court had released the accused minor on bail.
3. A case of murder against a minor accused of murder
On May 2022, two 17-year-old boys killed a person in Delhi together. In September 2023, a court in Delhi ordered that the two accused be tried as adults in this murder case.
According to the postmortem report, the accused first hit the victim’s head with a glass bottle and then attacked his chest with a heavy stone and a country-made pistol barrel.
Considering the heinousness of the crime, the court said that both of them committed the murder as part of a conspiracy. Earlier too, in another case, the accused had come out of the young person’s home after serving the sentence in a serious case under the Youth Justice Act. For these reasons, the court had said that the case should be tried against him as an adult.
4. Murder after unnatural sex with a 10-year-old boy
The incident is in June 2017. In Hyderabad, a 17-year-old minor took a 10-year-old child to the roof of a nearby government school on the pretext of playing. Where the accused raped the child in an unnatural way and then killed her by hitting her head with an iron pipe. Not only this, the minor also kept the dead body hidden for 8 days. In this case, the accused was sentenced as an adult.
A Hyderabad court had sentenced the accused to life imprisonment twice under different sections of the POCSO Act and the IPC.
