“He told the board his son had studied till Class VIII at a school 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 them to pass off his son as a juvenile. When the JJB asked the Kanpur school principal for the youth’s annual attendance and test records, he said termites damaged them.
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 underway to ascertain the authenticity of the documents,” he added.
The victim’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,” 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.
According to Yadav, if the youth is convicted of rape and murder as an adult, the maximum punishment could either be life imprisonment or death penalty. But if it is proven he was a juvenile at the time of the crime, he will be in jail for three years.
