Mumbai: A sessions court in the city on Wednesday rejected an appeal filed by a minor accused challenging the Juvenile Justice Board decision that he should be tried in the Sessions court in connection with the abduction and murder of a three-and-half-year-old girl from Nagpada for ransom. 

The court also rejected another appeal filed by  the state challenging board’s decision to not  send his co-accused case to sessions court. The sessions court rejected state’s appeal considering the limited role allegedly played by him.

 “The court has directed that our client’s case should be sent to the juvenile board,” said advocate Yakoob and Tahira Shaikh. They had contended before the court that the accused was 16 years and 6 months old at the time of incident. 

According to them, even as per the prosecution story, he has played limited role of making phone calls and he did not play any role in kidnapping the girl or killing her.

 Advocate Shaikh said that as per law the minor accused should be tried by Sessions court in the heinous crime but he did not play any role in kidnapping and murder. According to prosecution, he made phone calls to the family for ransom. They claimed that the accused is from an educated family and they are financially sound so there was no reason for him to do such crime and considering his age his case should be tried by the JJB. According to advocate Tahira the boy is also appearing for the HSC board exams and his first paper for English language got over on Wednesday.

On December 24, 2016 J J Marg police arrested two teenagers for kidnapping Junera Khan while she was playing outside her house on December 5. According to the prosecution, though the girl was strangulated hours after her kidnap and her body was stuffed in a rexin bag,.

 The police later arrested the teenagers and recovered the girl’s body.