Two minors convicted of participating in the 2017 murder of dairy farmer Pehlu Khan as members of a mob were on Friday sentenced to three years stay in a special home by Alwar’s Juvenile Justice Board (JJB).
Six persons accused of having led the attack were acquitted by a Sessions Court last year.
The convicts, who were minors below the age of 16 when they committed the crime, are now aged between 18 and 21. They are likely to be shifted to the special home on the premises of the Central Jail in Jaipur.
The JJB had last week held the two minors guilty under Sections 302 (murder), 147 (rioting), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 341 (wrongful restraint) of the Indian Penal Code. The JJB relied on video footage of the crime scene to reach its judgment.
The JJB had relied on the video footage of the crime scene, which showed the presence of the two minors in the mob, as well as other evidence, as the basis for reaching its judgment. Another juvenile, who was older than 16 in 2017, is facing trial as a regular accused in a court in Alwar, where his case was transferred since the offences for which he is being tried are covered in the category of ‘heinous’ crimes.
Khan, 55, a dairy farmer from Haryana’s Nuh district, his two sons and a few others were waylaid by self-styled cow vigilantes near Behror on the Jaipur-Delhi National Highway on April 1, 2017, and assaulted grievously on the purported suspicion that they were smuggling cows for slaughter. Khan succumbed to his injuries two days later in a hospital.
The sentence was handed down under Section 18(1)(g) of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, providing that a child found to be in conflict with law may be sent to a special home for a maximum period of three years for getting reformative services, including education, skill development, counselling, behaviour modification therapy, and psychiatric support.
The Alwar sessions court had acquitted six accused in the case on August 14, 2019, giving them the benefit of doubt on the basis of the police probe. Those let off by the court were Vipin Yadav, Kalu Ram, Dayanand, Ravindra Kumar, Yogesh Kumar and Bheem Rathi.
The State government filed an appeal in the Rajasthan High Court against the sessions court’s verdict after a Special Investigation Team pointed out loopholes in the probe conducted earlier by four investigating officers.
The High Court had earlier quashed the case of illegal transport of cattle for slaughter against Khan, his sons and the owner of the pick-up truck in which they were travelling. The court had ruled that Khan had purchased the animals for dairy and not slaughter.
