New Delhi: Months after 26-year-old Tarun Butolia died in a clash on Holi day in Uttam Nagar on March 4, Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) has declared another accused in the murder case, earlier identified as a minor, an adult, after finding that records supported his date of birth as Oct 7, 2007, and not Oct 7, 2011. The development comes after a court took cognisance of the chargesheet against 17 co-accused. He will now be sent to Tihar Jail.
The board determined Faizan’s age under Section 94 of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, after examining conflicting municipal and school records. “The 2007 date is supported by an earlier official municipal registration which has remained continuously subsisting and has never been shown to have been corrected or cancelled. The 2011 date, though reflected in the school records and in a subsequent municipal registration, ultimately rests upon parental declaration and a later delayed registration process which did not account for the pre-existing municipal record and whose foundational order has subsequently been cancelled,” the board held.
The dispute centred on an MCD birth registration dated Feb 27, 2008, which recorded Oct 7, 2007, as Faizan’s date of birth, according to complainant’s counsel Sumit Kumar. However, a school record based on an affidavit furnished by his father in 2016 and a second MCD registration issued in Feb 2018 recorded his birth year as 2011. The board noted that the delayed registration process, initiated in Jan 2018, had not checked whether an earlier municipal entry existed. The board is not required to find a document flawless; it is required to determine which of the competing dates is established by the more reliable evidence. ” The board also noted that the order underlying the 2018 registration had subsequently been cancelled. In Nov 2024, Faizan’s mother approached Goodwill Public School with revised Aadhaar particulars, saying the date of birth on the earlier Aadhaar did not match his actual date of birth.
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It acknowledged flaws in the older MCD record, including the absence of the original birth-reporting form and the incorrect recording of religion as “Hindu”. However, it said, “The discrepancy regarding religion constitutes an anomaly but not a sufficient basis for rejecting the historical registration. The board observed that the school entry relied on parental declarations and that “no independent contemporaneous birth record has been established as the source of that date. Download the TOI App.