The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that one of the accused in the 2018 Kathua gang-rape of a minor girl case was not a juvenile at the time of committing the crime and will be tried as an adult, reported news agency PTI.

A bench of justices Ajay Rastogi and J B Pardiwala set aside the orders of the Chief Judicial Magistrate at Kathua and the High Court which had held that the accused named Shubam Sangra was a juvenile, and hence he must be tried separately.

“We set aside the judgments of the CJM Kathua and the High Court and hold that the accused was not a juvenile at the time of commission of offence,” Justice Pardiwala said while pronouncing the verdict.

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The top court, however, held that medical opinion must be considered to determine the age range of the accused in the case. “Medical opinion regarding age in absence of any other conclusive evidence should be considered to determine the age range of the accused…Whether medical evidence can be relied upon or not depends on the value of evidence,” the court said, as quoted by PTI.

In 2018, the victim, an eight-year-old girl from a minority nomadic community, disappeared from near her home in a village close to Kathua in Jammu region on January 10. A week later, her body was found in the same area.

The state police’s crime branch, which probed the case, filed the main charge sheet against seven people and a separate charge sheet against a juvenile revealing chilling details about how the minor girl was allegedly kidnapped, drugged, raped repeatedly, bludgeoned and strangled to death.

In 2019, a Pathankot court sentenced three men – Sanji Ram, Deepak Khajuria and Parvesh Kumar – to life imprisonment. Sanji Ram, the caretaker of the temple, was named as the prime accused.

Along with them, the court also sentenced sub-inspector Anand Dutta, head constable Tilak Raj and special police officer Surender Verma to five years of jail term.

Also Read: Kathua rape case: Provide security to victim’s kin, lawyer, Supreme Court directs Jammu and Kashmir government

The trio were convicted under Section 201 (causing disappearance of evidence, or giving false information to screen offender), Section 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) and Section 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Ranbir Penal Code, which was the criminal code applicable in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir before its special status was revoked in August 2019.