Calcutta High Court orders release of Bangladeshi man jailed 21 years after being arrested as minor

The Calcutta High Court has ordered the immediate release and repatriation of a Bangladeshi national who had been in custody for more than two decades after being arrested as a minor for illegally entering India. The division bench noted that the man, now 36 years old, had spent over 21 years in jail since his arrest in February 2005.

The bench, headed by Justice Rajasekhar Mantha and Justice Rai Chattopadhyay, observed that under the Juvenile Justice Act the maximum punishment that can be imposed on a juvenile is seven years. Since the prisoner had already spent far more time than the permissible period in custody, the court directed that he be released immediately.

The order came after an enquiry into the appellant’s age conducted by an additional district and sessions judge in Basirhat, North 24 Parganas. An ossification test confirmed that the man is currently 36 years old, indicating that he was a minor at the time of his arrest in 2005. The court subsequently directed the state authorities to initiate steps for his repatriation to Bangladesh.

In a separate order on the same day, the bench also directed the release of another prisoner who had been arrested as a juvenile 14 years ago. Based on a report from the Fast Track Court in Rampurhat, Birbhum, the court found that the individual was just over 15 years old at the time of the alleged offence in 2011 and had already spent more than the maximum sentence allowed for juveniles.