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2001 YLR 3096

MUHAMMAD RIAZ vs THE STATE and another

Citation2001 YLR 3096
CourtLahore High Court
Case No.Criminal Revision No, 480 of 21101
Date2001-10-10
Judge(s)Zafar Pasha Ch.
ResultRevision dismissed

1. The learned Additional Advocate-General, Punjab, has cited the case of Ahmed Khan v. The State and another (2000 PCr.LJ 1985) from Sindh High Court. The import of the principle laid down in the precedent case is that if there is some doubt with regard to age of juvenile, the same should be decided in favour of the juvenile accused because the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance, 2000, has been enacted to provide a protection to the juveniles because capital punishment cannot be imposed on them. According to learned Additional Advocate-General, because Ordinance is beneficial enactment, therefore, benefit should be extended to the juvenile and not to the complainant. According to learned counsel for the petitioner if there was some dispute with regard to jurisdiction of Court then it should lean towards the Court which has plenary jurisdiction which obviously is Court of Sessions. On the force of that arguments, notice was issued to the learned Additional Advocate-General. He has appeared in response to notice and concedes that whenever a Court with special jurisdiction is created, then normally the Court of plenary jurisdiction should have jurisdiction but in case of doubt la beneficial enactment has to be interpreted in favour of the beneficiary. Following this principle when the facts of the instant case are taken into consideration it is found that no finding with regard to age of the accused was arrived at. However, on the basis of the available data the probability that the accused was less than 18 cannot be ruled out. In such an event where there is more probability of an offender being less than 18 years then the Court should tilt in favour of the accused and he should be tried by the Special Court constituted under the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance, 2000. The learned trial Court considering that the age of the offender appears to be less than 18 years at the t time of occurrence, therefore, assumption of jurisdiction by the Juvenile Court cannot be held to be illegal. The impugned order as such does not suffer from any illegality. This revision petition therefore, dismissed.

Cited by 2 cases

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