Juvenile gets bail in Pocso case after 90 days in detention without chargesheet

Jodhpur: Rajasthan high court's principal bench in Jodhpur has granted statutory bail to a juvenile suspect arrested in a Pocso case, holding his detention beyond 90 days without a chargesheet as a violation of his right to personal liberty.Justice Farjand Ali also ordered an investigation into what he noted was a "chronological impossibility" in the case records.
An order sheet dated Nov 24, 2025, mentions that a trial court rejected the juvenile suspect's bail plea and extended his remand. Justice Ali pointed out that a judicial order couldn't precede the event it records, taking cognisance of the fact that the bail application hadn't been filed until Nov 28 and was dismissed the next day.The juvenile suspect was arrested on Aug 28 last year and held at a child welfare centre, based on a case registered against him at Jodhpur's Luni police station.A plea for default bail under Section 187 of the BNSS was filed 92 days into his detention. The trial court rejected it, holding that the chargesheet had been filed on Nov 21 – within the prescribed period. The high court found "no contemporaneous order sheet" to support that chronology.Justice Ali noted that in her statement before the special Pocso court on Jan 9, the survivor didn't directly attribute any specific role in the crime to the juvenile, naming only his co-accused as the perpetrator of the alleged sexual assault that led to her getting pregnant.Seeking to resolve the discrepancies, the high court on Jan 30 asked the trial court to explain the absence of any judicial record of the chargesheet being filed. The presiding officer replied on Feb 2, citing a staff shortage for the delay.A further clarification sought on Feb 4 produced, three days later, an endorsement on the reverse of the chargesheet cover. But it still left the chronological inconsistency pertaining to the Nov 24 order sheet unexplained.Justice Ali held that these discrepancies could not be dismissed as typographical errors given the fact that a juvenile's liberty was at stake.Granting the boy bail, he ordered an independent fact-finding inquiry into the alleged irregularities, while stopping short of drawing immediate conclusions about the intentions of the judicial officer. Any fabrication or post-facto creation of record, the judge said, would "strike at the root of judicial integrity".