By Astha Bhumish Shah 

In a matter involving the offence of murder, the Madhya Pradesh High Court allowed a plea for trying a juvenile before the Children’s Court, after taking into account his criminal antecedents and Meta (formerly known as Facebook) posts about dominating others. It held that any leniency shown to the accused will only ‘promote his demeanour’ as it would tantamount to ‘misplaced sympathy’. In the present case, the accused respondent was 16 years and 11 months old at the time of the alleged incident wherein he was complicit in the murder of the complainant’s brother. The Court looked at the reports furnished by the Probationary Officer and the Medical Report, which is part of the preliminary report prepared by Juvenile Justice Board, in 2019; both these reports found the accused to be mentally capable and competent to commit the alleged heinous offence. After analysing the criminal history of accused, the Court found that he had been arraigned in a criminal case for offences including Section 354 IPC [Section 74 of BNS] and those under the POCSO Act. Further the Court observed that from the respondent’s Facebook posts that he wants to dominate other likeminded persons of his age as he as even referred to Section 302 of the IPC in the same. Based on these posts, the Court felt that it confirmed the juvenile’s ‘lack of respect for law’. Further, the District Appellate Court had also affirmed the order of JJB by granting the juvenile another chance to correct himself. Finally, the Court added that the Juvenile Justice Board shouldn’t have discarded the copies of social media posts filed before it while rejecting the application for trial before Children’s Court. (Saurabh v. State of Madhya Pradesh & Ors. – Criminal Revision No. 3086 of 2022) 

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