The court can rely on evidence, including radiological tests, to determine a person's age and may reject a claim of juvenility based on contradictory claims and evidence.

JUDGMENT :

1. Heard Sri Santosh Kumar Chaubey, learned counsel for the revisionist, Sri J.B. Singh, learned counsel for the respondent no. 2 and learned A.G.A. for the State.

2. This criminal revision has been filed under Section 102 of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015 with a prayer to set aside the order of the Juvenile Justice Board dated 26.03.2021 passed in age determination inquiry in Misc. Application No. 43 of 2020 arising out of Crime No. 439 of 2020 under Sections 302, 120-B IPC, Police Station Hasanpur, District-Amroha (J.P. Nagar) with a further prayer to set aside the order passed in criminal appeal affirming the order of the Juvenile Justice Board and to declare the revisionist a juvenile under the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015.

3. The submission of the revisionist are that the learned courts below have committed a manifest error of law in passing the impugned orders; in the school certificate the date of birth was shown as 10.08.2006, which clearly established the age of the revisionist as 14 years and 12 days on the date of the occurrence; the courts below ignored the school certificate thereby flouting the provisions of law; the school certificate was proved by the evidence of the teacher of the concerned primary school and by the Ex-Principal of the same institution examined as CW2 and CW3; the learned courts below instead of relying upon the original and the documentary evidence took into consideration the report of the Medical Board and disbelieved the date of birth, as shown in the certificate; the impugned order is illegal because it is founded on the fact that the copy of the pariwar register was not produced by the revisionist at the right time; at the same time, the age of the juvenile, as shown in the driving licence was accepted against the provisions of law, hence, the impugned orders are liable to be set aside and the revisionist deserves to be declared a juvenile.

4. The revisionist has relied on Ajay Kumar Singh @ Babloo Singh vs. State of U.P. and Uday Pratap Singh; 2022 (6) ADJ 85 (LB), wherein the Court observed that the matriculation certificate was available, therefore, there was no occasion to have gone for other documents, such as birth certificate issued by the local bodies. In the above case before the court the arguments of the revisionist that the Juvenile Justice Board should have gone for ossification test, was discarded as misconceived in the light of specific provisions given in clause (iii) of Section 94 of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015 which said that only in the absence of document mentioned in clause (i) and (ii), age shall be determined by an ossification test. The Court discarded the plea that the original document of the school first attended should have been summoned and held that the court below rightly determined the age of the juvenile on the basis of the matriculation certificate and it was opined that unless some documentary proof or evidence is produced before the Board or the lower appellate court, which may negate the correctness of the high school certificate, the order cannot be faulted.

5. The revisionist also relied upon the judgment of this Court in Buddhu vs. State of U.P.; (2021) 12 ILR A144, to stress the point that the educational certificate is to be preferred over any other evidence and the judgment of the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India in Ashwani Kumar Saxena vs. State of Madhya Pradesh; (2012) 9 SCC 750, wherein the Court stated its opinion in the following words :

"34........There may be situations where the entry made in the matriculation or equivalent certificates, date of birth certificate from the school first attended and even the birth certificate given by a corporation or a municipal authority or a panchayat may not be correct. But court, Juvenile Justice Board or a committee functioning under the JJ Act is not expected to conduct such a roving enquiry and to go behind those certificates to examine the correctness of those documents, kept during the normal