Pioneer News Service/Bhuabneswar
The juvenile court's order sentencing Sudarshan
Hansa alias Chenchu to 14 years detention at a juvenile home in connection
with the murder of Australian missionary, Graham Stuart Staines and
his children, has raised the hackles of child rights activists. The
case of this 14-year-old tribal boy may take an interesting turn with
one of the Human Rights activists likely to move to the High Court
against the judgement while mobilising public support to protect the
interests of Chenchu who is currently lodged in a juvenile home at
Angul.
Chenchu's lawyer, Gyan Acharya has already
announced that he would move to the High Court after the Puja vacations.
But Sudarshan now also has the support of the likes of Kasturi Mohapatra,
who runs a child rights body called open learning system (OLS), and
has worked extensively in the field studying the Juvenile Justice
Act and the condition of juvenile homes in the state. "The place they
have sent him to is not a juvenile home. It is a juvenile jail where
he should not be," asserts Ms Mohapatra saying that she is contemplating
the possibility of challenging Chenchu's sentence in the higher court.
"May be we move the session court," she says adding that detention
for 14 years for a boy of 13 or 14 is beyond the comprehension of
any student of juvenile law.
Mohapatra asserts that Chenchu's rights as
a child have been violated at various stages of the case. "To start
with despite being aware of his minority status the police kept him
in jail for nearly two months after the arrest. It was only later
that they realised their mistake and shifted him to the observation
centre," she says adding that she was not aware whether the Bench
which delivered the judgement comprised experts on child psychology
which is considered mandatory. What Mohapatra finds even more surprising
is the fact that the child was tried for the offence even before the
other 14 accords, all grown up men. Mohapatra feels that there have
been many violations in the case of Chenchu primarily because he is
a poor country boy with practically no resources to defend himself.
"But let him rest assured that we are here to help him now," she avers.
Meanwhile, Chenchu's sentence is believed to have come as a shock
to people in his native village of Manoharpur where Staines alongwith
his sons Timothy and Philip was killed in January last year. The people
of Manoharpur had never imagined that this slip of a boy would be
the first to be convicted in the case and would draw such an unprecedented
term.
