New Delhi: The lone juvenile convict in the gruesome December 16 gang rape case may be released a week before his three year sentence ends as the authorities are keen to keep him away from public and media attention fears he may be lynched if he leaves the safety facility of reform home.
The juvenile convict's three-year term in the rehabilitation centre is coming to an end on December 16 even as his four adult accomplices await the Supreme Court's decision on their appeal against death penalty given to them. As per law he is to be set free after completion of the term.
“He is scheduled to be released on December 15 but we know there will be a lot of attention on him that day. For his safety, we plan to release him a week in advance,” a senior government official told a leading English daily.
Earlier, the home ministry was in a fix what to do with the juvenile convict amid reports that he has turned a radical Islamic hardliner during his stay in the rehabilitation centre where he was indoctrinated by one Abid, a juvenile Kashmiri militant. Counsellors said he had turned religious, grew a beard and offered namaz five times a day.
According to an IB report, the juvenile convict, most savage of the rapists, came in contact with Kashmiri juvenile Abid, accused of Delhi high court blast case and both had been sharing the same cell at the juvenile home for the last seven or eight months.
He was 17-and-a-half, the youngest of six men who raped and brutally tortured a 23-year-old medical student on a moving bus in the capital on December 16, 2012. She died 13 days later in hospital.
