Supreme Court rejects plea on Nirbhaya case convict’s juvenile status

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a petition of the Nirbhaya case convict Pawan Gupta regarding his alleged juvenile status, pointing out that the plea had already been rejected by subordinate courts.

A bench headed by Justice R. Banumathi had earlier queried Pawan’s counsel: “How many times will we hear the same things? You have already raised it many times.”

Pawan has moved the top court to challenge a Delhi High Court order that declined to entertain his plea that he was a juvenile when Nirbhaya was gang-raped and brutally assaulted on December 16 night in 2012. She died on December 29, 2012, at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.

A Juvenile Board in January 2013 had declared that Pawan was not a juvenile when he committed the crime. While Pawan’s counsel had argued that the prosecution deliberately concealed that he was a juvenile, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said the prosecution had consistently maintained that the convict was not a juvenile at the time of the crime. “His birth certificate has been filed on record. The parents never disputed the age at the time of the commission of the crime,” said Mehta. (IANS)

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