Prayagraj, October 12: It took almost thirty eight years for an accused, convicted for a life-imprisonment for a crime like murder, to prove him a minor.
However, the accused Ramvijay Singh of Kanpur had knocked the doors of lower courts to the High Court but failed to get justice, then he approached the Supreme Court of India.
The High Court’s Special Bench, sitting on the directions of the Supreme Court, found the accused a minor at the time of the incident on the basis of medical evidence.
However, an appeal against the sentence awarded to Ramvijay will now be decided in the Supreme Court.
The case was heard by a bench of Justice Pankaj Naqvi and Justice Rajiv Mishra.
Ramvijay along with Lakhan Singh and Shivvijay Singh were charged in the July 20, 1982 murder incident. On September 3, 1983, after the trial of the case, the sessions court Kanpur sentenced him and the other accused to life imprisonment.
An appeal against this order was filed in the High Court on September 7, 1983, on which the High Court released the petitioner on bail.
About 32 years later, on October 28, 2015, petitioner Ramvijay filed an application in the High Court stating that he was close to 13 years of age and a minor on the day of the incident. His plea was pending and the High Court on April 22 2020 dismissed the appeal and upheld the decision of the sessions court.
However, against the High Court’s decision, the petitioner filed a special leave petition in the Supreme Court. On which the Supreme Court directed the High Court to hear and dismiss the petition filed for determining the age of the petitioner.
On behalf of the petitioner, senior advocate Anoop Trivedi said that on the basis of the radiology report, this court released the accused Ramvijay on bail only while pending trial. The Radiology report is not on record in the order dated October 22 1982 by the sessions court. No one challenged this report. Therefore, assuming the same report to be true, the petitioner should be declared a minor.
The court directed King George’s Medical University (KGMU) Lucknow to determine the age of the petitioner by making a team of experts.
The team of experts reported Ramvijay’s age between 40 and 55 years in the report given on September 18 2020.
The court admitted that according to this, Ramvijay’s age at the time of the incident was less than 17 years and he was a minor.
