Brief Facts
- The present appeal was filed before the Supreme Court challenging the judgment passed by the Aurangabad Bench of the Bombay High Court in the Confirmation Case and Criminal Appeal whereby the High Court confirmed the death penalty awarded to the Appellant (Digambar) and life imprisonment to another accused-Appellant (Mohan) for the offence punishable under Section 302 IPC read with section 34 IPC. The Appellant No. 1 was convicted for killing his sister pooja, who was having extra-marital affair with Govind. The Appellant No. 1 was last seen to have left the house of sister of Govind along with Pooja and Govind.
Issues
- Can a person be convicted on the basis of last seen theory when the death of the deceased occured shortly thereafter?
- What construes ‘rarest of the rare’ case so to attract death penalty?
Held
- The Apex Court upheld the conviction of Appellants. However, the death sentence of the Appellant No. 1 (Digambar) was commuted to life imprisonment. The life sentence of Appellant No. 2 (Mohan) remained unchanged.
- The prosecution was able to establish that the deceased and the accused persons left the house of P.W.5 (Shankar) together and soon thereafter the death of the deceased person had occurred. As such, the burden to show as to what happened after leaving the house would shift on the accused in view of Section 106 of the Indian Evidence Act and the accused persons have utterly failed to discharge the said burden. Thus, no interference was warranted with the concurrent findings of the Trial Court and the High Court that the accused appellants are guilty of offence punishable under Section 302 of the IPC.
- The Hon’ble Supreme Court analyzed various precedents to ascertain what construes to be the ‘rarest of rare case’ so as to impose death penalty. Reliance was also placed upon the recent judgment of Supreme Court relied upon the Sundar @ Sundarrajan v. State by Inspector of Police, Review Petition (Criminal) Nos. 159-160 of 2013 in Criminal Appeal Nos. 300-301 of 2011, wherein the Hon’ble Supreme Court held that ‘rarest of rare’ doctrine does not require that in such a case only death sentence has to be imposed and while considering as to whether the death sentence is to be inflicted or not, the Court will have to consider not only the grave nature of crime but also as to whether there was a possibility of reformation of a criminal.
- The Supreme Court noted that the accused-appellant had no criminal antecedents, the medical report showed that the appellant has not acted in a brutal manner and had inflicted only one injury, each, on both the deceased. Furthermore, appellant-Digambar, who has been sentenced to capital punishment, was a young boy of about 25 years at the time of the incident and even the report of the Probation Officer, Nanded as well as the Superintendent, Nashik Road Central Prison would show that the appellant-Digambar has been found to be well-behaved, helping and a person with leadership qualities and he is not a person with criminal mindset and criminal records.
Relevant Para No.
- 18, 27, 28, 29, 30
