In a very significant development, we see that the Bombay High Court in a latest judgment titled Pooja Gagan Jain vs State of Maharashtra that was pronounced finally on June 25, 2024 after reserving it on June 21 has passed an order to release the minor accused in the Pune luxury car accident case that had claimed two lives into the care and custody of his paternal aunt. The Bombay High Court declared that the impugned remand orders that had been passed by the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) was illegal and without jurisdiction and so was thus set aside. It must be noted that this pertinent verdict was passed by a Division Bench of Bombay High Court comprising of Hon’ble Ms Justice Bharati Dangre and Hon’ble Justice Smt Manjusha Ajay Deshpande on an habeas corpus petition that had been filed by the minor’s aunt who is seeking the accused’s release from the observation home alleging that he was unlawfully and arbitrarily detained by the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) in an observation home and which was allowed.
It would be worthwhile to note that the Bombay High Court directed that after the release, the minor must continue his session with the psychologist. It may be recalled that during the hearing last week, the Bombay High Court had questioned how the Juvenile Justice Board could have remanded the minor accused in the Pune Porsche accident case to an observation home when he had already been released on bail that had been granted to him on May 19 but was later remanded to an observation home. The Bench had very rightly remarked saying that the remand and its subsequent extension “completely nullified the effect of bail.”
To recapitulate, it was in the early hours of May 19, 2024 that the juvenile who is a 17-year-old son of a prominent Pune builder and who was allegedly driving a Porsche Taycan car at a very high speed in an inebriated state lost control when the vehicle had crashed into a bike that culminated in the killing of the two software engineers named Aneesh Awadhiya and Ashwini Koshta in Pune’s Kalyani Nagar. It was later found that the juvenile had been drinking at a pub with his friends just before the accident. It must be noted that the vehicle reportedly dragged one of the two persons on the bike and finally came to stop after hitting another two wheeler and a car.
It is worth noting that the senior advocate Mr Aabad Ponda who appeared for the petitioner when the matter was first heard on June 14 while praying for the immediate release of the juvenile argued robustly that a juvenile once granted bail cannot be placed in an observation home. It was further argued by Mr Ponda underscoring very rightly that the bail was operative till date and that the minor had neither been rearrested on additional charges nor had there been any bail cancellation by a superior court. Mr Ponda thus asserted that the minor was under illegal detention.
No doubt, Mr Ponda had a valid point when he highlighted that instead of challenging the bail order, the authorities had instead filed an application citing various concerns, including public outrage and the minor’s alleged addiction. We thus see that Mr Ponda very rightly argued that the minor could not be sent to an observation home while on bail, citing Section 39(2) of the Juvenile Justice Act. More to the point, Mr Ponda very rightly stated that ordering remand without cancelling the bail is not permissible even under stringent laws like MCOCA or TADA, let alone the JJ Act.
Of course, as we see, the Bombay High Court while granting the bail to the juvenile accused had very rightly observed that the prosecution had not filed any application to cancel the bail granted to the minor and emphasized that it would not deny relief based on the grounds of maintainability. We saw how a Pune court had granted bail to the father recently in the case under the Motor Vehicles Act. It must be borne in mind here that the plea before the Bombay High Court was first filed through advocate Swapnil Ambure who too said that the juvenile should be immediately released.
So in the ultimate analysis, we thus see for ourselves that the Bombay High Court after taking into consideration all the facts before it and so also after perusing all the material that was placed on record found it totally appropriate to order the release of the minor accused in the Pune Porsche car accident case. The Division Bench of the Bombay High Court was most upright and candid in holding most elegantly, eloquently and effectively that, “We are bound by law, the aims and objectives of the Juvenile Justice Act and must treat him as any child in conflict with law separately from adult, despite the seriousness of the crime.” Very rightly so!
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