The Supreme Court on Monday directed the immediate release of death row convict Narayan Chetanram Chaudhary after finding that he was just 12 years old at the time of the offence.
After concluding that his claim of juvenility was true, a bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose, KM Joseph, and Hrishikesh Roy ordered his release on Monday.
Chaudhary served 28 years in prison, 25 of them as a death row inmate for the 1994 Rathi family murders in Pune in which two children and a pregnant woman were killed.
Courts, including the Supreme Court, reported his age as being between 20 and 22 years old during his trial and appeals against his conviction.
Following the confirmation of his death sentence, Chaudhary and one of his two accomplices, Jeetendra Nainsingh Gehlot, submitted mercy pleas to the President. Gehlot’s death sentence was commuted to life in prison in October 2016, while Chaudhary withdrew his mercy appeal and instead filed a review petition, claiming to have been a minor at the time of the crime.
This argument was aided by the discovery of his Rajasthan school records in 2015, which firmly confirmed his juvenility. Prior to then, he was unable to confirm his age because the incident occurred in Maharashtra, where he had attended school only for 1.5 years.
The Supreme Court directed Pune’s Principal District and Sessions Judge to investigate Chaudhary’s age in January 2019, and he submitted his findings in a sealed cover.
The Vacation Bench, comprised of Justices Indira Banerjee and Sanjiv Khanna, opened it in May 2019 and found his assertions to be true. The Supreme Court ordered him immediate release on Monday.
