"Abhorrent" Crime Not Sole Criterion For Death Sentence: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court Wednesday commuted the death sentence, awarded to a man for raping and murdering a seven-year-old girl, to life imprisonment saying it cannot be said that there is no probability of the convict being reformed and rehabilitated.

The top court, while upholding his conviction for the offences including that of murder and rape under the Indian Penal Code and the provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, said the convict shall not be entitled to premature release or remission before undergoing actual imprisonment for 30 years.

A bench headed by Justice A M Khanwilkar delivered its verdict on the appeal against the October 2017 judgement of the Allahabad High Court which had confirmed the death sentence awarded to the convict by the trial court.

The trial court had in December 2016 convicted the man for several offences and sentenced him to death for the offence under section 302 (murder) of the IPC.

“The appellant was about 33-34 years of age at the time of the commission of the crime in the year 2015. Looking to the overall facts and circumstances, in our view, it would be just and proper to award the punishment of imprisonment for life to the appellant for the offence under section 302 IPC while providing for actual imprisonment for a minimum period of 30 years,” said the bench, also comprising Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and C T Ravikumar.

In its 98-page judgement, the bench noted that the appellant was accused of enticing a seven-year-old girl to accompany him on the pretext of picking fruits and thereafter raped her.

It also noted that the appellant had murdered her and dumped the body near a bridge on a riverbank.

The bench said both the trial court as also the high court had taken the abhorrent nature of the crime alone to be the decisive factor for awarding death sentence in the case.

“In other words, the impugned orders awarding and confirming death sentence could only be said to be of assumptive conclusions, where it has been assumed that death sentence has to be awarded because of the ghastly crime and its abhorrent nature,” it said.

The top court said the heinous nature of the crime, like that in this case, definitely discloses aggravating circumstances, particularly when the manner of its commission shows depravity and shocks the conscience.

It said at the same time, it is noticeable that the appellant has no criminal antecedents, comes from a very poor socio-economic background, has a family as well as unblemished jail conduct.

“When all these factors are added together and it is also visualised that there is nothing on record to rule out the probability of reformation and rehabilitation of the appellant, in our view, it would be unsafe to treat this case as falling in ‘rarest of rare' category,” it said.

“Putting it differently, when the appellant is not shown to be a person having criminal antecedents and is not a hardened criminal, it cannot be said that there is no probability of him being reformed and rehabilitated,” the bench said.

It said even when the case is taken to be not falling in the category of ‘rarest of rare', the impact of the offences committed on the conscience of the society as a whole cannot be ignored.

While observing that the appellant was rightly convicted by the trial court and his conviction was rightly maintained by the high court, the bench said the sentence awarded, being of termination of natural life, requires closer scrutiny concerning the statutory requirements of section 354(3) of the CrPC as also the principles enunciated by the top court.

Referring to an earlier judgement delivered by the top court on an appeal against conviction and death sentence awarded for rape and murder of a two-and-a-half-year-old girl, the bench noted that in that matter a table of 67 cases decided by the Supreme Court over the past 40 years was perused.

The bench noted it was observed that when the offences were of sections 376 (rape) and 302 (murder) of the IPC and the age of the victim was under 16 years, capital punishment was confirmed in 15, but in three, it was later on commuted to life in review.

“It could readily be seen that while this court has found it justified to have capital punishment on the statute to serve as a deterrent as also in due response to the society's call for appropriate punishment in appropriate cases but at the same time, the principles of penology have evolved to balance the other obligations of the society, i.e., of preserving the human life, be it of accused unless termination thereof is inevitable and is to serve the other societal causes and collective conscience of society,” it said.

Dealing with the case, the bench observed it is proved beyond doubt that the “hapless child” met with her gruesome end after having been treated inhumanely and having been subjected to sexual assault.

It noted that the victim was lastly seen in the company of the appellant and he has failed to satisfactorily explain his whereabouts and his knowledge of the location of the dead body.

“The death sentence awarded to the appellant for the offence under section 302 IPC is commuted into that of imprisonment for life, with the stipulation that the appellant shall not be entitled to premature release or remission before undergoing actual imprisonment for a period of 30 (thirty) years,” the bench said, while partly allowing the appeal filed by the convict.