Heinous Nature Of Crime Can’t Be Ground For Capital Punishment

Heinous nature of crime cannot be ground for capital punishment: Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday commuted the death sentence of a man convicted of raping and killing a seven-year-old girl to life imprisonment.

The apex court said the heinous nature of the offense alone cannot be the deciding factor in awarding the death penalty.

It also cannot be said that there is no possibility of reformation or rehabilitation of the convict.

A bench of Justice AM Khanwilkar, Justice Dinesh Maheshwari, and Justice CT Ravikumar ruled murder and murder under the Indian Penal Code and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses Act (PACSO).

Upholding the conviction in various offenses, including rape, said that the convict shall not be entitled to premature release or any remission before he undergoes actual imprisonment of 30 years.

Heinous nature of crime: The bench pronounced this decision on appeal against the October 2017 judgment of the Allahabad High Court.

The High Court had upheld the death sentence awarded by the trial court in December 2016. The top court said, “The appellant was 33-34 years old at the time of the commission of the offense in 2015.

In view of all the facts and circumstances, we are of the view that for the offense under section 302 with the punishment of actual imprisonment for a minimum period of 30 years.

It would be just and proper to award life imprisonment to the appellant.

Court gave a 98-page decision.

In the 98-page judgment, the bench observed that the heinous nature of the offense as in this case certainly exposes grave circumstances, especially when the manner of its execution shows lewdness and shakes the conscience.

It is also to be noted that the appellant has no criminal history, comes from a very poor socio-economic background, has a family, and has impeccable conduct in jail. It would also not be right to consider it as the rarest case.

Revealed in NCRB report: Foreign prisoners are lodged in these jails of the country, the number of Bangladeshi prisoners is highest

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has presented shocking data regarding foreign prisoners lodged in the jails of India.

According to NCRB data, 7 out of 10 foreign prisoners lodged in Indian jails are still under trial.

This has come to the fore in the ‘Prison Statistics India 2020’ report of the National Crime Records Bureau. In this, the data till the end of 2020 has been analyzed.