New Delhi: “I am still that 13-year-old boy and the world is brand new for me. Jail time doesn’t mean much,” says 41-year-old Narayan Chetanram Chaudhary, who has spent the last 28 years of his life in prison.
Chaudhary was released from Nagpur Central Jail last month after the Supreme Court affirmed that he was a juvenile when he was arrested in September 1994 for the murders of five women, one of whom was pregnant, and two children in Pune, and that his name was actually Niranaram Chetanram Chaudhary.
Chaudhary spent almost 25 years on death row, divided between Pune’s Yerawada Central Jail and Nagpur Central Jail, and most of it in a 12 ft by 10 ft maximum security cell.
He now has renewed hope for life, and a wish-list, he told ThePrint in an interaction.
He wants to visit Kerala and Las Vegas, watch the Fast and Furious movies, and try litti chokha, a popular Bihar dish.
Unlettered when he went to jail, Chaudhary says he has always been someone who likes to “keep up with the times”.
During his time behind bars, he taught himself English and Marathi, and began reading newspapers and books — keeping himself abreast of not just news, but fashion trends and Bollywood gossip as well.
He claims that he used to read five newspapers a day, and has finished over 800 novels, including those by Indian authors like Chetan Bhagat and Durjoy Datta, and foreign authors like Sidney Sheldon and David Baldacci.
“These books used to entertain me, some of them had love triangles…books like these help us (jail inmates) to forget the sentence and our troubles briefly, because there’s an uncertainty in our minds 24 hours a day. When we read foreign authors, that helps to understand the culture outside India,” he tells ThePrint.
While in jail, Chaudhary also managed to earn a BA degree in social science, an MA in sociology, completed a course in tourism from an open university, and courses in Gandhian studies.
And it was this will to study that helped him find the way out of jail.
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How Niranaram came to be called Narayan
Chaudhary was 12-and-a-half years old when he was arrested for murder in 1994, from Jalabsar in Rajasthan’s Bikaner district. In February 1998, a Pune court convicted him and sentenced him to death. He was tried as an adult, with the charge-sheet mentioning his age as 20 years.
Chaudhary had claimed before the court that he had an alibi, and that he was not in Pune at the time of the incident.
While the details of his journey before he was arrested are unclear, Chaudhary told ThePrint that he had run away from his home in Jalabsar when he was young, and ended up in Pune for some time.
Chaudhary says that once he found his way to Pune, he started being called Narayan because the people in the city found it difficult to pronounce his original name, Niranaram.
He was therefore recognised as Narayan — until his school certificates and other documents confirmed his real name and age to the court in 2019.
Between 1998 and 2000, Chaudhary’s appeals against his conviction were rejected by the Bombay High Court as well as the Supreme Court, and a review petition was also dismissed.
He had been arrested along with two other men — Jitu and Raju, the latter of whom turned approver during the trial and was pardoned.
Chaudhary says he does not remember much from his time before he landed in jail.
He also got back in touch with his family after they were contacted post his arrest, he told ThePrint.
Determined to study while in jail, Chaudhary recalls that he had asked his father to send his school documents to prison, so that he could enroll into the education courses.
It was these certificates that brought back memories of his real name being Niranaram, and he realised that he was actually a juvenile when he was arrested in 1994, he says.
Thus began his struggle to prove his real age and identity of Niranaram — a name that he had long forgotten but was part of all his documents.
Court affirms Niranaram’s identity
Looking for ways to prove his age, Chaudhary in August 2005 requested a prison inspector general in Pune’s Yerawada jail for a medical examination. Its report, dated 24 August 2005, stated that he was “more than 22 years old but less than 40 years old” as of that date.
In the subsequent years, Chaudhary made other such attempts to prove his age before different authorities, he told ThePrint.
In 2015, the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act was passed by Parliament.
Three years later, in October 2018, Chaudhary filed an application under the newly-introduced Act, requesting the apex court to hold that he was a juvenile in 1994.
In filing his plea, he got help from Project39A, a criminal justice programme at the National Law University in Delhi which had first taken up Chaudhary’s case in 2014.
In January 2019, the Supreme Court directed the principal district and sessions judge in Pune to examine and report whether Chaudhary was, in fact, a juvenile at the time of his arrest.
In March 2019, the Pune judge submitted a detailed report, concluding that Chaudhary was 12 years and 6 months old at the time of his offence.
The report stated that “Narayan Chetanram Chaudhary is the same person whose another name is Niranaram Chetanram Chaudhary”.
The judge examined several documents, including a transfer certificate from Chaudhary’s school in Rajasthan, a certificate of date of birth issued by his school, a copy of a school register, and other documents issued by the tahsildar in Bikaner.
Chaudhary’s date of birth was found to be 1 February, 1982.
Accepting the judge’s report, a Supreme Court bench comprising Justices KM Joseph, Aniruddha Bose and Hrishikesh Roy passed a judgment on 27 March this year, declaring Chaudhary a juvenile at the time of commission of offence.
In the judgment, the judges acknowledged that the “other factor which has crossed our mind is as to whether a boy of 12 years could commit such a gruesome crime”.
However, the court was careful to not let “speculation of this nature cloud (the) adjudication process”.
Since the 2015 Act states that a juvenile cannot be sentenced to death, the Supreme Court invalidated the death sentence awarded to Chaudhary, and he was directed to be released.
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Law allows sentence to be invalidated
In the long period of Chaudhary’s incarceration since 1994, the legislation on juveniles in conflict with the law — the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act — was enacted in 2000, amended over the years, and completely revamped in 2015.
The 2015 Act states that when a child in conflict with the law, below 16 years of age, is found to have committed a heinous crime, the maximum sentence that he or she can be awarded is three years’ stay in a special home, with “reformative services including education, skill development, counselling, behaviour modification therapy, and psychiatric support during the period of stay in the special home”.
Section 9 of the 2015 Act — under which Chaudhary had filed his application — says that an accused can raise a plea of being a juvenile at the time of the alleged crime before any court, and at any stage, even after the final disposal of the case.
The law, therefore, allows any accused who is found to be a child on the date of offence to avail all the benefits under the 2015 Act, even if the case has been finally decided by then, and even if the person has already attained the age of majority by then.
The Act also states that if a court finds a person was a child at the time of commission of offence, it should forward the details to the Juvenile Justice Board, and that if the court has passed any sentence against the person, the sentence “shall be deemed to have no effect”.
Therefore, while the conviction could still stand, the law allows the sentence to be invalidated.
Chaudhary says he is thankful to everybody who helped him out over the years — from the team at Project 39A to the Supreme Court judges who passed the order for his release.
However, having waited almost 18 years since he first tried to prove that he was a juvenile at the time of his offence, he told ThePrint: “I think there are two sets of laws in India — one for the rich and one for the poor. They (the rich) are getting a hearing, and people like me are the ones waiting in line.”
‘Here no spring no solace’
While in jail, Chaudhary used to write letters to the team at Project 39A.
In one such letter dated 3 April, 2022, seen by ThePrint, he says: “You know madam I spending time in the hell, here no spring no solace and you can’t find food health behind bars…deep neck sorrow has rounded me since my early age growing in the prison lost my youthful time in his hell (sic).”
He would meticulously write the letters in capital letters, because he says he didn’t have the chance to practice cursive writing.
In the same letter, he gives his views on US President Joe Biden and the Russia-Ukraine War, saying that “today’s world facing lack of globally accepted leadership”, before writing two pages on the war.
He also requested books by Australian action thriller writer Matthew Reilly.
In another such letter, he tells his lawyers that he began reading newspapers in Hindi and Marathi in 1997, and in English, in 2010.
“After 2015, I have less access of reading stuff… Sometimes I didn’t find anything to read then I pick up atlas and trying to see the world’s map and capitals of various countries their language, production and place of growth (sic),” he says, writing that prison is “dystopian”.
‘Biggest punishment for me’
Chaudhary is now looking forward to a new life and is excited about all that he has to explore. For the first time, he has a phone and has started using Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
In Delhi, Chaudhary visited the Vegas Mall but he says he is still trying to figure out ways to fit in.
“It’s a new world for me… I have to be careful walking around people, so that I don’t bump into anybody. I guess other people don’t care, they’re used to this, but I haven’t walked among people. I haven’t practised walking in crowded places,” he told ThePrint.
While he spent most of his time in jail reading, he understands the limitations of gaining a perspective of the world through text, instead of experiences, and is now trying to make up for that gap by observing people interacting with each other.
“I am trying to interact with people in a way that doesn’t hurt them. I try to make sure I don’t say anything disrespectful, especially to women… I am also trying to observe how people around me interact with each other and am learning to behave in a similar fashion,” he says.
While he was acquiring knowledge through newspapers and books, Chaudhary says he forgot his native language over the years.
“I have trouble speaking to my mother because I don’t know the Rajasthani language anymore. I used to speak it during my childhood but now I’ve forgotten it. So, I ask my nephews to act as translators,” he told ThePrint.
“After being in jail for so long, today I can’t talk to my mother in a language she understands. That is the biggest punishment for me,” he says, ruefully.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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