A 17-year-old boy killed two people with his speeding Porsche, hitting their bike in Pune Saturday night. The boy was allegedly in an inebriated state. The Pune police had petitioned the Juvenile Justice Board to allow them to treat the teenager as an adult as his age is 17 years and eight months. However, the minor was granted bail by the board hours after the crash because he would do community work for 15 days and write an essay of 300 words on road safety.
The system feels that the accused is a minor, who cannot be treated like an adult. But a video of the boy has surfaced which shows him with some of his friends in a BAR with liquor in front of his table. However, the system has considered the accused as innocent. Because there is a special provision in the section of the Juvenile Justice Act regarding heinous crimes. Under this, if a minor between 16 and 18 years of age commits a heinous crime, then the Juvenile Justice Board can assess the minor and allow the case to be tried like an adult.
Here, heinous crime means that the nature of the crime should be such that there is a provision of 7 years of punishment in the IPC section. But what about those families whose children's lives were taken by a minor aged 17 years and 8 months? The system only sentenced him to write an essay and released him.
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