Om Prakash v. State of Rajasthan and Anr. — Medical age-determination for a juvenility claim

Part of the Forensic Docket on Legal Desire Forensics — how a forensic technique fared under appellate scrutiny.

The facts

A 13-year-old girl was allegedly subjected to rape by respondent no.

2 and a co-accused.

Respondent no.

2 claimed the benefit of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000, on the ground that he was a juvenile on the date of the incident.

The headnote records that the High Court itself could not record a conclusive finding of fact that respondent no.

2 was in fact a juvenile at the relevant time, yet still granted him the benefit of the Act and referred his case to a juvenile court.

On appeal by the victim’s father, the Supreme Court examined how the age of the accused had been determined and the adequacy of the medical and documentary evidence relied upon for that finding.

Why this belongs in the Forensic Docket: A juvenility claim cannot rest on an inconclusive age finding — if the medical and documentary evidence does not actually establish minority, granting Juvenile Justice Act protection anyway is an error the Supreme Court will correct on a victim’s appeal.

Case details

Read the full judgment (PDF), sourced from the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open dataset (AWS Open Data Registry, CC-BY-4.0).

Explore more in the Forensic Docket or browse the full Forensics hub.