Juvenile, treated as adult, awarded life term for murder

Sunit Dhawan
Tribune News Service 
Rohtak, August 6

A Rohtak court sentenced a youth to life imprisonment for a three-year-old murder case that he was booked in when he was still underage—the first time that a court in Haryana has treated a minor as an adult under the amended Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015.

The youngster, whose name has been withheld because he was still a minor when the crime was committed, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, five years in jail for voluntarily causing hurt while committing robbery, three years for disappearance of evidence and two years for cheating.  

On July 26, 2016, district police were alerted about a man found dead near some fields on Sanghi-Khidwali road. The man was later identified as Charanjit, a resident of Punjab’s Bathinda. Charanjit was a driver, and was on his way back from Delhi, where he had dropped somebody, when he was murdered.   

Police investigators claimed that the suspect had asked Charanjit for a ride from at Mannat Dhaba on Delhi-Rohtak Road, and, while Charanjit was driving, strangled him. Then he stole his car and his mobile phone, and he dumped the body on the road, police said.

A juvenile justice board he was presented before said he could be tried as an adult.