BENGALURU: The 17-year-old girl accused of helping her father kill seven members of their family here could be tried as an adult, if a Juvenile Justice Board finds after a preliminary assessment that she understood the nature of the alleged offence.
Section 15 of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015 allows children aged 16 to 18 accused of heinous offences to be assessed on their mental and physical capacity to commit the crime, their ability to understand its consequences and the circumstances in which it was committed, with the help of psychologists and other experts. If the board holds that an adult trial is warranted, it can transfer the case to the children's court under Section 18(3), which must independently decide the question.
The girl, a second-year pre-university student, and her father S Indushekar, 52, were arrested on November 5 in connection with the killings, alleged to have been carried out at their home over about 15 days in October. The FIR of November 5 names both as accused, with Indushekar listed as an adult accused and his daughter as a juvenile in conflict with the law. The bodies were recovered from locations in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
A police officer said the central question is whether Indushekar manipulated his daughter into helping him dispose of the bodies, and that the seriousness of the allegations alone will not decide the outcome: her understanding of the alleged crimes, and the extent to which she was influenced or coerced, will matter. Investigators are examining her suspected role in bringing relatives to the house, packing and transporting the bodies and cleaning the scene, and the father's claim that he turned her against her mother's family by portraying them as enemies who stood between her and the family property.
Karnataka Home Minister Priyank Kharge said Indushekar had allegedly brainwashed his daughter and made her assist in the crime. Forensic Science Laboratory and Scene of Crime Officer teams have inspected the recovery sites and post-mortems have been conducted; investigators are now working on forensic evidence, call records and CCTV to fix the sequence and timing of the killings.
(With inputs from PTI and media reports)