Amid pressure to put the juvenile on trial in an adult court, officials conducted an investigation to determine his age and concluded he was 17.
A government panel set up after the Delhi gang-rape to recommend changes to sex crime laws rejected calls to lower the age at which people can be tried as adults from 18 to 16.
The panel’s report in January said India’s justice system continued to “breed more criminals including juveniles in our prison and reformatory system by ghettoing them in juvenile homes”.
The report, overseen by a retired Supreme Court judge, added that it was “completely dissatisfied with the operation of children’s institutions.”
Shahbaz Khan, from the “Haq: Centre for Child Rights”, told AFP that there were “no proper care plans” for institutionalised children which undermined the intention of rehabilitating wrong-doers.
Ranjana Kumari, a women’s rights activist from the Centre for Social Research, said police and the courts were still too slow to respond to the victims of sex crime.
“What we got was a good piece of legislation and an increase in the number of women with the confidence to report crimes against them. But so what? That’s not good enough,” she said.
Kumari said the teenager’s likely punishment was too lenient, and he should have been tried as an adult.
“This is a very gruesome crime and he was almost an adult at the time it was committed,” she said.
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