Plea of juvenility can be raised even after 22 years: Allahabad HC

In an important judgment, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has held that a person can raise a plea of juvenility even after passage of 22 years during trial.

The bench has permitted a woman, who was a minor in 2000 at the time of the dowry-related death of her sister-in-law, to move a plea before a court to get her case transferred to the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB).

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

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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 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.