New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy on Sunday asserted that the juvenile convict should not be released as a free person till management committee decides whether he is mentally sound and whether he has been socially main streamed.
“The High Court judgment is correct that the law says three years and no way that any High Court or Supreme Court can change that. But the issue is that there are other provisions that have to be acted upon before he is formally released as a free man. According to the rules, he can’t be released till a management committee decides whether he is mentally sound…He was supposed to release yesterday but he has not been released, Management committee has up to two years to decide. So, he will be under controlled movement for two more years,” Swamy told ANI here.
“DCW has filed the petition at night, why so late ? I don’t think there is any way in the present laws to keep him in custody of the juvenile justice board. He has to be kept under chains in some forms by using the rules. That the best I can say,” he added.
BJP leader Subramanian Swamy had earlier filed a Public-Interest Litigation (PIL) before the High Court to extend the stay of the juvenile, claiming that there was no proof he had been ‘reformed’ and that intelligence reports had said he was being ‘radicalised’ while in detention
Delhi Commission for Women chief Swati Maliwal late on Saturday filed a Special Leave Petition in the Supreme Court against the release of the juvenile convict in Nirbhaya gangrape case. The apex court has decided to hear the petition on Monday.
The convict in Nirbhaya gang rape case is now 20 years old. He was a juvenile in 2012 when he committed the heinous crime along with his friends in a moving bus in the capital.
The court found him guilty of raping and assaulting the victim, who later died in hospital, along with five accomplices.
Due to being a juvenile when the crime was committed, he was tried under the Juvenile Justice Act and was ordered to be kept in a remand home for three years.
The convict, to be the most brutal of the attackers, has been taken to an undisclosed location from a correction home in North Delhi amid concerns that there was a threat to his life. He is scheduled to be released today.
