Allahabad High Court
Rishipal Singh Solanki vs State Of U.P. And 2 Others on 12 March, 2021
HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT ALLAHABAD ?Court No. - 76 Case :- CRIMINAL REVISION No. - 430 of 2021 Revisionist :- Rishipal Singh Solanki Opposite Party :- State Of U.P. And 2 Others Counsel for Revisionist :- Santosh Kumar Srivastava,Alka Srivastava Counsel for Opposite Party :- G.A. Hon'ble Dinesh Kumar Singh-I,J.
Heard Sri Santosh Kumar Srivastava, learned counsel for the revisionist and Sri G. P. Singh, learned A.G.A. for the State.
Learned counsel for the revisionist has argued that the age of the accused/opposite party no. 2 has been determined erroneously by the Juvenile Justice Board as well as appellate court on the basis of High School certificate wherein date of birth is recorded as 25.09.2004 while the age should have been determined on the basis of medical examination, prayer for which has been refused illegally, therefore, impugned orders need to be set aside.
I have gone through the impugned orders passed by both the forums, it has been recorded in the order of the appellate court that on the basis of High School certificate, the age of the accused on the date of occurrence stands 15 years 8 months and 16 days and the same has been adjudged to be correct and accordingly, the order of the Juvenile Justice Board has been upheld by the appellate court.
I do not find any infirmity in the impugned orders in view of the law laid down in Section 94 of Juvenile Justice Act which is quoted hereinbelow:
94. (1) Where, it is obvious to the Committee or the Board, based on the appearance of the person brought before it under any of the provisions of this Act (other than for the purpose of giving evidence) that the said person is a child, the Committee or the Board shall record such observation stating the age of the child as nearly as may be and proceed with the inquiry under section 14 or section 36, as the case may be, without waiting for further confirmation of the age.
(2) In case, the Committee or the Board has reasonable grounds for doubt regarding whether the person brought before it is a child or not, the Committee or the Board, as the case may be, shall undertake the process of age determination, by seeking evidence by obtaining ?
(i) the date of birth certificate from the school, or the matriculation or equivalent certificate from the concerned examination Board, if available; and in the absence thereof;
(ii) the birth certificate given by a corporation or a municipal authority or a panchayat;
(iii) and only in the absence of (i) and (ii) above, age shall be determined by an ossification test or any other latest medical age determination test conducted on the orders of the Committee or the Board:
Provided such age determination test conducted on the order of the Committee or the Board shall be completed within fifteen days from the date of such order.
(3) The age recorded by the Committee or the Board to be the age of person so brought before it shall, for the purpose of this Act, be deemed to be the true age of that person.
It is apparent from above that in determination of the age, the first preference has to be given to the date of birth from the school or matriculation or equivalent certificate from the concerned examination board and in case these are not available, the next option would be followed which includes birth certificate given by a corporation or municipal authority or a panchayat and thereafter only the the third option is to be taken which relates to the ossification test of the accused.
In this case, High School certificate is found to be genuine on the basis of which, age of the accused has been determined, therefore, I do not find any infirmity in the impugned orders.
In view of the above, this revision deserves to be rejected, and is accordingly, rejected.
Order Date :- 12.3.2021 VPS