Cannot Trace Juvenile Offender In Nirbhaya Case, Says WCD Ministry

Even as the nation celebrates the Supreme Court’s judgment upholding the death penalty for the offenders in the Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case of 2012, it is also of equal interest to know the whereabouts of the juvenile offender in the case.

Officials in the Union Women and Child Development ministry told Indian Express that the juvenile is now untraceable. Post the conviction, he was sent to a remand home – amid protests across the nation -- as he was then a minor. After serving his term of three years, he was released in December 2015.

Union WCD Ministry officials regretted the fact that the NCRB had delayed the process of preparing a national database of sexual offenders, and hence the crucial time lost resulted in the juvenile getting away. An official was quoted as saying that despite urging from their side to hurry up the process, the approval for the register came only recently, and as a result no one has any details of the juvenile.

In April this year, the Union Cabinet gave its nod to preparing the register with the complete profiles of offenders. In April again, the Centre had cleared an amendment to the POCSO Act to award death sentence to rapists of children below age 12. WCD Minister Menaka Gandhi said that the central government has been taking measures that will serve as deterrents for such heinous crimes. She gave the example of a death sentence recently in Madhya Pradesh, for the rape of a minor girl, after a new law was formulated in the state.

According to this report in The Quint in December last year, last heard, the juvenile was a cook at a roadside eatery in South India. He had been rehabilitated there by the NGO that had kept him immediately after his release in 2015.

Even before he was released from the correction center in 2015, the Intelligence Bureau had issued an alert that he could have joined the Jihadi movement, upon being brainwashed by his Kashmiri roommate, as per this report.