Nirbhaya case: From rapist to terrorist?

It was a big mistake made by the Juvenile Observation Home to keep the convicted minor of the 2011 Delhi High Court blasts and the convicted Nirbhaya rapist together in isolation for as long as seven months. We don’t want this boy to be released, but legally we can’t do much about it. We fear that he will head straight to Kashmir after his release. The juvenile home not only failed to reform the rapist but also made a severe error of judgement

— An Officer, Intelligence Bureau (IB)

The juvenile convict in the Nirbhaya rape case is to be released in December. The date of his release is, in fact, yet to be decided by the authorities as the government wants to keep it under wraps, fearing that he could be mobbed the moment he steps out of the observation home.

In a recent visit to one of the Observation Homes – as the detention centres for juveniles offenders are called – The Quint found out how the inmates are boarded. This home has a strength of 166 inmates, all of whom are allowed to mingle with each other, except for four inmates. They are lodged in a separate room with an attached toilet and aren’t allowed to eat or play with other inmates.

The story of the juvenile convict in the 16 December Delhi gangrape is similar. Initially, he was kept in an isolated room in the Observation Home at Majnu Ka Tila, New Delhi. He had no one to talk to till the 2011 blast convict was shifted to his room. Home staffers, who believed that they are both hardened criminals, decided to lodge them both together.

Last week, officers of the Intelligence Bureau met with staff members of the home to work out what transpired between the two.”The IB wants to know what the blast convict shared with the Nirbhaya rapist. The Intelligence Bureau is confident that he told him about his handler and details on how to become part of a terrorist group. The problem is that the latter is not sharing these details with anyone now,” said the counsellor for the juvenile accused in the Nirbhaya rape case.

The police say the blast convict didn’t give away details of the group he worked for. So various counsellors and welfare officers from the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare are now currently engaged in speaking to the Nirbhaya rapist, all in an effort to dig out any details that were allegedly passed on to him. Officers of intelligence agencies tell The Quint that they will keep a watch on the Nirbhaya rapist even after his release.

“It was an error to keep the two of them together. But now it is irreversible. He knows that he will not be accepted by the society. We are sure that he will take the terrorism route because he feels that he will be accepted there. Surprisingly, he is aware that he is being watched, and what is being reported by the media about him,” said a staff member of the Observation Home. Intelligence officers say they began to suspect that the Nirbhaya rapist may have been indoctrinated after they intercepted a phone call made by the blast convict to one of his relatives.

The convict has another one-and-a-half year to serve. The juvenile welfare officer who The Quint spoke with says Observation Homes are unable to reform convicted minors. There is no vocational training given to the accused. Though education, recreation, food, and counselling are provided, efforts are not made to ensure that inmates can fend for themselves after their release. That’s why many of them often choose the convenient path of crime.