Kathua rape case accused, claiming to be juvenile, to be tried as adult

The accused in the Kathua rape case who had claimed to be a juvenile will now be tried as an adult, the Pathankot district and sessions court ordered on Thursday.

The lawyer of the accused said that his party would appeal against the ruling in the High Court. He claimed that the ruling was wrong as it had not taken into consideration rule 74 of the Juvenile Justice Act, which says an ossification test can be conducted only in the absence of a matriculation certificate.

"On the basis of the documents that were relied upon by the Crime Branch itself, we had filed an application seeking a declaration from the court that one of the accused namely Parvesh Kumar alias Manu is a juvenile. However, the sessions court dismissed our application on the basis of the ossification report today" said lawyer of the accused Ankur Sharma.

"The matriculation certificate is the biggest proof of somebody's age. According to that certificate, he was a month and 8-10 days less than 18 years of age. In the ossification report, the age was shown to be between 20-21 years" he further added.

It may be mentioned here that directions to conduct a bone ossification test had been issued by District and Sessions Judge Tajwinder Singh to determine the age of one of the eight accused in the case, in which an eight-year old girl was abducted, drugged, gang-raped, tortured and killed in January this year.

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