Court case(2020) 2 SCC 787

A juvenile aged about sixteen and a half, driving a Mercedes, hit and killed Siddharth Sharma in Delhi in 2016. He was charged under s. 304 IPC (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), punishable with imprisonment up to ten years or for life, but with no minimum sentence. The Juvenile Justice Board and the Children's Court treated the offence as "heinous" so that the juvenile could be tried as an adult; the Delhi High Court held that it was not heinous, since s. 2(33) requires a minimum punishment of seven years. The victim's sister appealed.

The Court dismissed the appeal. "Heinous offence" is defined by a minimum punishment of seven years or more; an offence with no minimum sentence does not fit it, and the court cannot rewrite the statute by reading "minimum" as "maximum". Such offences fall into a fourth category that Parliament overlooked. Exercising its power under Article 142, the Court directed that, until the legislature acts, an offence with a maximum above seven years but no minimum, or a minimum below seven years, shall be treated as a "serious offence", so that the juvenile is dealt with by the Board and not tried as an adult.