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The Madhya Pradesh high court has observed that juveniles were being treated "rather too leniently" in the country, and that the legislature has "not learnt any lessons" from the 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape case.
In an order passed on September 11, Justice Subodh Abhyankar of the high court's Indore bench made these strongly-worded observations while dismissing an appeal filed by a man against the lower court's sentence in the case of four-year-old girl's rape in 2017.
The convict was 17 years old at the time of the rape incident in 2017.
He escaped from a juvenile correction home in 2019 along with seven other boys, six months after being sentenced.
Expressing displeasure over this development, the high court said, "As a parting note, this court is once again at pains to observe that juveniles in this country are being treated rather too leniently, and that the Legislature, to the utter misfortune of the victims of such crimes, has still not learnt any lessons from the horrors of Nirbhaya, reported as (2017) 6 SCC 1 (Mukesh v. State NCT of Delhi)."
"Looking at the overwhelming medical evidence available in the present case, it does not take an expert to see as to how demonic the appellant's conduct was while he was a juvenile, and his mindset can also be gathered from the fact that he has also absconded from the observation home. He is presently at large, probably lurking in some dark corner of the street, for yet another prey, and there is nobody to stop him," the court observed.
"And, although such voices are being raised time and again by the Constitutional Courts of this country, to the utter dismay of the victims, they have not been able to make any impact on the legislature even after a decade of Nirbhaya which took place in the year 2012," it said.
"Let a copy of this order be sent to the law secretary, department of legal affairs, government of India, New Delhi (India)," the court said.
An additional sessions judge of Indore had sentenced the person concerned to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment on May 8, 2019 under the Indian Penal Code and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, and ordered that he be sent to jail when he turns 21.
The lower court's sentence was challenged in the high court through an appeal on behalf of those, who absconded from the juvenile home along with seven other boys on November 13, 2019.
The high court, after hearing both sides, upheld the lower court's decision and dismissed the convict's appeal.
The high court ordered that a warrant be issued against the absconding appellant and he be arrested so that he can serve the remaining sentence of imprisonment in the rape case.
The Nirbhaya case pertains to the 2012 gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student.
The case sparked nationwide protests with demands for stricter laws to deal with such cases.