Birth Record As Per School Certificate Enjoys Priority Over Village Records While Determining Claims For Juvenility: J&K&L High Court

The observations came from a bench comprising Justices M A Chowdhary while hearing a revision petition against order of Additional Sessions Judge which upheld Magistrate's decision that the petitioner/appellant was not a juvenile.

Counsel for the petitioner argued that both the Courts below had decided the juvenility of the petitioner as an accused, based on the record of the Chowkidar of the village and did not rely upon the school certificate issued in favour of the petitioner/accused which enjoys primacy over other records.

Adjudicating upon the matter, Justice Chowdhary observed that law on the subject mandates that priority must be given to the certificate issued by the educational institution other than play school which was firstly attended by the accused, to ascertain the claim of juvenility.

In order to buttress the said position of law the bench placed firm reliance on the Supreme Court judgement in Vijay Singh V/s State of Delhi 2012 wherein it was held that in the claim of juvenility, first priority is given to the matriculation certificate or equivalent certificate, second priority is to be given to the date of birth certificate issued from school (other than play School) first attended and in absence of other certificates, the certificate issued by Municipality or Panchayat.

Applying the law in vogue to the matter at hand, the bench observed that in the instant case the accused was shown to have his date of birth as 20.08.1996, as recorded in the Government (Boys) High School Bari Brahmana Jammu, which he had attended first and therefore the date of birth issued by the said school should have been relied upon and date of birth of the petitioner/accused should have been accepted as 20.08.1996.

Explaining further the court said that having regard to this proposition, both the Courts below committed error by not accepting the date of birth as shown in the school record which had also been proved during the inquiry. The age of the petitioner should have been accepted as 20.08.1996 based on the school record, having primacy over other documents as against the record of village Chowkidar, the bench underscored.

"Therefore, the petitioner/accused as on the date of commission of the offence was below the age of 18 years and was a juvenile within the definition of Juvenile Justice Act and his trial, in any case, could have been conducted only by Juvenile Justice Board and not by a regular Sessions Court", the court maintained.

For the foregoing reasons the court allowed the petition and the case against the petitioner was ordered to be transferred to the Juvenile Justice Board Jammu, for further proceedings.

Case Title : Sanjay Raina Vs State of J&K & Ors.

Citation : 2022 LiveLaw (JKL) 218

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