Court No. - 44
Case :- HABEAS CORPUS WRIT PETITION No. - 624 of 2021 Petitioner :- Archana @ Archana Gautam And Another Respondent :- State Of U.P. And 4 Others Counsel for Petitioner :- Atul Kumar Singh Counsel for Respondent :- G.A.
Hon'ble Mrs. Sunita Agarwal,J. Hon'ble Mrs. Manju Rani Chauhan,J.
Heard learned counsel for the petitioners and learned A.G.A. for the State.
The present habeas corpus writ petition has been filed with a prayer to produce the corpus-petitioner no.1 before this Court, who has been sent to Nari Niketan, Kanpur under the order passed by the Child Welfare Committee, Aligarh under Section 27(9) of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015.
As regards the contention of the learned counsel for the petitioners that in the medical examination, the estimated age of the corpus came about 18-19 years and as such she has to be treated as a major girl, we may note the provisions of Section 94 of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, which read as under:-
"Section 94 of Juvenile Justice Act 2015 - Presumption and determination of age-
(1) Where, it is obvious to the Committee or the Board, based on the appearance of the person brought before it under any of the provisions of this Act (other than for the purpose of giving evidence) that the said person is a child, the Committee or the Board shall record such observation stating the age of the child as nearly as may be and proceed with the inquiry under section 14 or section 36, as the case may be, without waiting for further confirmation of the age.
(2) In case, the Committee or the Board has reasonable grounds for doubt regarding whether the person brought before it is a child or not, the Committee or the Board, as the case may be, shall undertake the process of age determination, by seeking evidence by obtaining --
(i) the date of birth certificate from the school, or the matriculation or equivalent certificate from the concerned examination Board, if available; and in the absence thereof;
(ii) the birth certificate given by a corporation or a municipal authority or a panchayat;
(iii) and only in the absence of (i) and (ii) above, age shall be determined by an ossification test or any other latest medical age determination test conducted on the orders of the Committee or the Board:
Provided such age determination test conducted on the order of the Committee or the Board shall be completed within fifteen days from the date of such order.
(3) The age recorded by the Committee or the Board to be the age of person so brought before it shall, for the purpose of this Act, be deemed to be the true age of that person."
A careful reading of sub-section (2) of Section 94 of the Act, 2015 clearly indicates that only in absence of the certificate of matriculation (High School Examination), the age determination can be done by the Committee by an ossification test or any other latest medical age determination test. As in the instant case, the High School Mark sheet of the corpus (victim girl) was before the Committee, we cannot question the decision of the Committee to place reliance on the entries of birth in the certificate.
The decision of the Child Welfare Committee dated 20.09.2021 has been appended with the writ petition wherein it is categorically recorded that as per the High School mark-sheet of the examination 2019, the date of birth of the corpus is 01.01.2004.
In any case, the correctness of the decision of the competent committee constituted under the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015 cannot be examined within the scope of the habeas corpus writ petition. In case the corpus or any other person is aggrieved by the decision of the committee, it will be open for them to file an appeal under Section 101 of the Act, 2015 before the Children Competent Court.
The habeas corpus writ petition is, accordingly, dismissed. Order Date :- 21.9.2021 JK Yadav/-