New Delhi:
An alcoholic man, who killed his wife and four children with an axe, has been asked by the Supreme Court why the life sentence given to him for the ghastly act should not be enhanced to the death penalty.
Alok Verma committed the "ghastly and brutal" murder of his wife Shikha and four children Rahul, Uttam Kumar, Chhotey and Anjali, aged between 10-12 years, and inflicted injuries to another daughter Priyanka with a knife and axe, after taking the help of a hired killer in Uttar Pradesh.
He committed the crime because Shikha used to object to his gambling, liquor consumption and criminal activities. He also suspected her of infidelity.
The apex court bench of Justice Markandey Katju and Justice C.K. Prasad said: ''Issue notice to Alok Verma as to why the life sentence awarded to him by the (Allahabad) high court should not be enhanced to death sentence.
''We cannot imagine a more ghastly act and we are, prima facie, of the opinion that this falls in the category of rarest of rare cases in which death sentence should have been given," the court said in its order on Friday.
Verma had earlier undergone imprisonment for one year in a case of kidnapping. His wife tried to persuade him to give up illegal acts but he used to beat her, the apex court order noted.
The accused was convicted and awarded death sentence by the trial court but the high court reduced it to life sentence.
Assailing the high court for commuting the death sentence to life imprisonment, the apex court order said: ''Prima facie, we find the reasoning of the high court to be strange. Merely because a person is in financial crisis does not mean that he is at liberty to commit ghastly and gruesome murders.
It appears that the wife of the accused was of a noble character who tried to reform him, but the accused rather than being reformed committed these monstrous crimes. We fail to understand how the high court could reduce the death sentence in these circumstances.''
The high court had observed that Verma was a post-graduate in sociology and had no job. It was his financial difficulties that led him to crime.
Holding that the murders were not ''pre-planned'' and were result of ''hopelessness'' of the accused, the high court said that the absence of alternative avenues to make a livelihood, advice of his wife to stay away from criminal activities coupled with the threat of disclosure of his wrong acts resulted in the occurrence of the incident.