A 12-year-old was tried for murder, convicted, and spent his best years on death row
Niranaram Chetanram Chaudhary is a living testament to the pathetic state of our police and justice systems. In 1994, he was 12 years old — and tried for murder on the presumption that he was 22. This happened because somehow he got dragged into a murder case in Pune, in which five women and two children were knifed to death. After class three he ran away from his school at Bikaner in Rajasthan, went to Pune, and began working in a tailoring shop. He doesn’t remember why ran away from his home or with whom, nor could any of his brothers. Some cop misspelled his name as Narayan instead of Niranaram, leading to his trial, conviction, and death sentence. What is startling and heartrending is the fact no one in the system — from cops of various ranks and lawyers to judges at different levels in the judicial hierarchy — could even notice that a child was being on trial. A junior police officer may have misspelled the name, but could he tell a 12-year-old kid from a 22-year-old youngster? And what about the senior officers? And the prosecuting lawyers and defence counsels? And judges in the trial and appeal courts? A 42-year-old man, if he abuses his own body, may look 52; and a 52-year-old man, who takes good care of his body, may pass off as 42. But how on earth can a 12-year-old boy be mistaken as 22 years of age? Even if he did commit the crime, he could not have been imprisoned for more than three years, as per the juvenile law in effect at that time.
Justice is said to be blind, but those responsible for dispensing it are not supposed to be blind; their cognitive and cogitative faculties ought to be sound. In Chaudhary’s case, all these were found wanting — and he paid a terrible price. He had to spend 28 long years in prison, and on death row to boot. The best years of his life — adolescence and most of his youth — were spent behind bars. “When you are on death row, every hope is broken. You just try to get through the day,” he recently told a newspaper after his release, adding that he now feels blessed to look at the stars on a dark night after spending years confined to four walls under the glare of lights. In prison, he studied a lot, getting a master’s degree in sociology. It was at this time that he realised that he was much younger than the prison records showed. The Supreme Court ended his ordeal in March when it concluded that Niranaram was 12 years and six months old at the time of the murders. School documents and medical examination proved that. The exercise was carried out as part of the National Law University’s Project 39A which works on death penalty reform. This episode proves, if any proof is needed, that India’s justice and police systems urgently need reforms. Our political masters, however, have not shown great zeal for reforms in the justice system. People like Niranaram Chetanram Chaudhary continue to suffer.