17-year-old may be first juvenile to be tried as adult

Murdering an elderly woman just two months after he was released from a correction home may make a 17-year-old boy, apprehended again on Wednesday, the first juvenile to be tried as an adult under the new law passed by Parliament recently.

Urging the Juvenile Justice Board to treat the boy as an adult, the police on Friday argued that he murdered the woman just five months after kidnapping and killing a 13-year-old boy, for which he was sent to the correction home. The boy was released from the juvenile home in December last year for his “good behaviour” after his parents applied for bail, saying he had to appear for Class 10 exams.

But just two months later, he robbed and strangulated 65-year-old widow Mithilesh Jain in South Delhi’s B.K. Gupta Colony. He was arrested from his house in Faridabad on Thursday.

If the Juvenile Justice Board accepts the recommendation of the Delhi police, then the boy will be the first to be tried under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act. The legislation lowering the age of juvenile criminality from 18 to 16 years if they are found to be involved in heinous crimes was cleared by Parliament on December 22. It was passed after a prolonged debate on whether juveniles involved in heinous crimes should be tried as adults. The demand for the new law had grown following the release of the juvenile convict in the December 16 gangrape case.

“We have submitted a written application to the Juvenile Justice Board, exhorting them to treat the juvenile, who is around 17 years and 11 months old, like an adult,” a senior police official said.

Talking about the juvenile’s earlier crime involvement, the police said that in September 2015, the juvenile, along with his girlfriend, had allegedly abducted and murdered a 13-year-old boy for money which he needed for participating in a popular reality dance show.