Girl’s Mother Produces Marksheet That Shows He Was 19 At The Time Of Crime
Lucknow: The father of a 19-year-old youth accused in a 2016 rape-murder case and the principal of his school have been booked for allegedly forging documents to portray him as a minor so that he could escape the adult justice system and, if convicted, get a much lighter punishment.
Divyakant Singh Rathore, the principal magistrate of the Juvenile Justice Board, ordered the registration of an FIR against the two after the mother of the 17-year-old girl who the youth is accused of sexually assaulting and killing produced documents in court to claim that the accused was not 16, as claimed by his father, but 19 at the time of the crime.
On March 15, 2016, the youth — a popcorn seller in Delhi’s Mandawali — had allegedly raped his cousin (17) at her house in Greater Noida and strangled her with a piece of cloth when she tried to fight him off. He had dumped the body in a nearby plot and fled.
The girl’s brother said the accused had called him to his house in Delhi on the day of the crime to ensure the girl was alone at home. “When I reached Delhi, I came to know he had left for our house in Greater Noida. Since my mother would usually be away at work in the morning, he wanted me out of the house too. This was part of his plan. He raped my sister and killed her because he feared she would tell others. How could he do this? He is our cousin,” the brother said.
After the girl’s mother filed a police complaint, the accused was apprehended from his house the same day. “For the next six years, the case was heard in the sessions court. But the accused’s family produced some documents to claim he was a minor at the time of the rape and murder in 2016. The court directed the Juvenile Justice Board to take the case up,” said Surendra Singh Yadav, who represented the girl’s family in court.
Arun Kumar Gupta, a member magistrate at the JJB, said the youth’s father came up with a marksheet that showed his son was born on February 10, 2020 — which meant he was 16 at the time of the crime. “He told the board his son had studied till Class VIII at a vidyalaya in Kanpur. His date of birth, according to that document, was February 10, 2000,” he added.
When the principal of the Kanpur school was called for a hearing, he corroborated the father’s claims.
At the next hearing, however, the girl’s mother came up with documents to contest the claim that the youth was a juvenile. Among them was a Class XII marksheet of the inter college in Kanpur where the accused, she said, had studied. It showed he was born on July 10, 1997 — making him 19 at the time of the crime.
The girl’s mother cited this document to argue that the youth’s father had forged documents to pass off his son as a juvenile. When the JJB asked the Kanpur school principal for annual attendance and test records of the youth, he said they had been damaged by termites.
On October 4 this year, the JJB principal magistrate observed that the accused’s father — in connivance with the principal — had tried to mislead the board. An FIR was ordered against them.
Vindhyanchal Tiwari, the SHO of Phase 2 police station, said the FIR was registered against the two under sections 465 (forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document) of the IPC on October 9. “An investigation is under way to ascertain the authenticity of the documents,” he added.
