Cal HC sets free 2 murder convicts jailed as juveniles, one a B’deshi nat’l
Times of India | 7 March 2026
Kolkata: Calcutta High Court on Thursday freed a Bangladeshi national who has spent 21 years in jail for murder after it was established that he was a minor at the time of committing the crime. Another murder convict from Birbhum, who has also served 14 years in a different murder case, was also released on similar grounds.
A minor cannot be convicted for more than seven years under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, the court held. It also directed the state to repatriate the Bangladeshi national.
Both cases came up before a division bench of Justice Rajasekhar Mantha and Justice Rai Chattopadhyay on Thursday. The bench ordered the release of both men after ossification tests revealed they were juvenile when the murders took place.
Counsels for the Bangladeshi national had pleaded that he was born on Jan 1, 1990, and was a ‘child in conflict with law' at the time of the offence on Feb 8, 2005. He and two others had hacked a man to death in Basirhat near the India-Bangladesh border, said state counsel Bitashok Banerjee. While his co-accused died during pendency of the case, the Bangladeshi boy was convicted and jailed in 2005. In 2016, he moved HC court against the conviction order.
On April 11, 2022 his appeal came up before a division bench of Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice Bivas Pattanayak, which ruled that the Juvenile Justice Act allows a convict to raise the plea of juvenility even at the appellate stage. The HC then ordered an ossification test.
A report submitted by the additional district and sessions judge of Basirhat stated that the convict was found to be about 36 years at the time of the ossification test conducted recently. The district judge determined that the Bangladeshi national was around 16 years of age when he committed the crime.
In the second case, the convict was found to be aged 15 years and 9 days when he strangled his "wife" on Feb 27, 2011. His counsel, Achin Jana, argued that despite being a minor at time of incident, he was not tried under Juvenile Justice Act. In his case, too, the additional district and sessions judge of the fast track court at Rampurhat, Birbhum, ascertained him to be a minor after ossification test.