The Telangana high court on Tuesday declared as a juvenile, one of the six accused in the sensational gang rape of a 16-year-old girl abducted from a pub in the upscale Jubilee Hills area of Hyderabad on May 28 last year, people familiar with the matter said.
The high court passed an order to this effect, after hearing a petition filed by one of the juveniles accused in the case, the son of a BRS leader, challenging an order of the special court for POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) on September 30 last year that he be treated as a major.
Declaring the accused a minor, the high court directed that the prosecution should try him as a juvenile and not as a major.
Following the high court order, the case will now be tried with four accused as majors and two others as juveniles.
On September 30, the fifth additional chief metropolitan magistrate of Juvenile Justice Board in Hyderabad Justice Radhika Gavvala ruled that four of the five juveniles accused in the case be treated as adults and tried by a criminal court.
The judge pronounced the judgment to this effect, after interacting with the accused and examining the material on record produced by the Hyderabad police. She announced that she was transferring the case records to the 12th additional metropolitan sessions judge court, Nampally for trial.
On July 26, four of the accused were released on bail and the fifth one on the following day. On August 4, the sixth accused, Saduddin Malik (18), a major, was also granted bail by the Telangana high court. The other three juveniles who were ordered to be treated as adults have not filed an appeal.
In the charge sheet that ran into nearly 600 pages filed on July 28, the Hyderabad police said the accused forced the minor girl to get into a Mercedes Benz car at Amnesia and Insomnia Pub on May 28 evening and from there drove it to a pastry shop, where she was shifted into a Toyota Innova in which they raped her.
The police booked cases against the accused in the rape incident under Sections 376-D (gang rape), 323 (causing injuries) and 376 (kidnapping) of the Indian Penal Code, besides under the POCSO Act. Another case was also booked under the Information Technology Act for circulating the pictures and video of the victim while going in the car.
The Jubilee Hills police later filed a petition before the Juvenile Justice Board requesting that the accused juveniles be treated as majors and tried accordingly, as the crime they committed was heinous.
Justice Radhika Gavvala said the board conducted preliminary assessment of four of the accused in compliance with Section 15 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015. She said she had interacted with them to assess their mental and physical capacity to commit the alleged offences and the ability to understand the consequences of the offences and also circumstances in which they allegedly committed the offences.
Both the psychologist and the board member also said they had the mental and physical capacity to commit the alleged offences. The board member, however, felt that they had no understanding of the legal consequences of their actions.
“They were not under the influence of alcohol or other substances. There were no compelling circumstances in which they allegedly committed the offence. Hence, the juveniles could be tried as adults having regard to the gravity of the offence,” the judge observed.
