Recently, the three judges’ bench of the supreme court of India observed in Pappu v. state of Uttar Pradesh [CRIMINAL APPEAL NOS. 1097-1098 OF 2018] that the abhorrent nature of the crime alone cannot be the decisive factor for awarding a death sentence. Due consideration should also be given to the equally relevant aspect of mitigating factors before concluding that option of any other punishment than the capital one was foreclosed.
The bench of Justice A.M. Khanwilkar, Justice Dinesh Maheshwari, and Justice C.T. Ravikumar commute the death sentence into imprisonment for life, with the stipulation that the appellant shall not be entitled to premature release or remission before undergoing actual imprisonment for 30 (thirty) years.
The present appeal was filled as a special leave petition under Article 136 of the constitution of India challenging the decision of Allahabad high court whereby the court affirmed the order of the trial court and upheld the conviction of the appellant of offences punishable under Sections 376, 302, 201 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 and Section 5/6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, has confirmed the death sentence awarded to him for the offence under Section 302. the appellant was accused of enticing a seven-year-old girl to accompany him on the pretext of picking lychee fruits, having thereafter committed rape upon the child; having caused her death and having dumped the dead body near a bridge on the riverbank, after having dragged the dead body over a distance of one and one-quarter kilometers
The apex court framed the following issues for its consideration:
- Whether the conviction of the appellant calls for any interference?
- If the conviction of the appellant is maintained, whether the sentence of death awarded to the appellant deserves to be maintained or deserves to be substituted by any other sentence?
Panchsheel principle of circumstantial evidence
In the case of Hanumant v. State of Madhya Pradesh, the supreme court of India: AIR 1952 SC 343 deduced five golden principles and named them panchsheel of proving a case based upon circumstantial evidence. These principles are as follows:
- The circumstances from which the conclusion of guilt is to be drawn should be fully established.
- the facts so established should be consistent only with the hypothesis of the guilt of the accused, that is to say, they should not be explainable on any other hypothesis except that the accused is guilty,
- the circumstances should be conclusive and tendency,
- they should exclude every possible hypothesis except the one to be proved
- There must be a chain of evidence that should be complete so that it does not leave any reasonable ground for the conclusion consistent with the innocence of the accused and must show that in all human probability the act must have been done by the accused.
“Rarest of rare” doctrine
The Doctrine of Rarest of Rare was established in the case of Bacchan v. the State of Punjab (1980) 2 SCC 684. The Supreme Court, in this case, tries to provide a doctrine, particularly for offences culpable with death to decrease the vagueness for courts regarding when to go for the highest punishment of the land. In this case, the court held that capital punishment can be given only in the “rarest of rare” cases. According to this doctrine, life imprisonment is the rule and the death penalty is an exception for cases of murder.
In the Macchi Singh v. the State of Punjab (1983) 3 SCC 470, the supreme court suggests the criteria when a case can fall under the rarest of rare category. The criteria were as follows:
- Manner of commission of murder
- Motive for the commission of murder
- Socially abhorrent nature of the crime
- Magnitude of the crime
- Personality of the victim of murder.
Submissions made on the behalf of the appellant
The appellant relied upon several mitigating factors for which the death punishment deserves not to be approved. According to the petition, the good jail conduct of the appellant is one of the mitigating factors.
The second mitigating circumstance is that the appellant has no criminal antecedents and he had been a decent member of the society, which also shows a strong possibility of reformation. In support of his submission, the appellate relied on the judgment of Gudda Alias Dwarikendra v. State of Madhya Pradesh: (2013) 16 SCC 596 and Kalu Khan v. the State of Rajasthan: (2015) 16 SCC 492 where the apex court has considered the absence of criminal antecedents and the age (35 years) as mitigating factors.
The next mitigating circumstance is the appellant’s family dependence and socio-economic background.
According to the appellant, the next mitigating factor is that the case is based on circumstantial evidence so extreme punishment would not be awarded. The appellant referred to the cases of Shatrughna Baban Meshram v. State of Maharashtra: (2021) 1 SCC 596.
Submissions made on the behalf of the state/ respondent
The respondent in the present case made the following submissions:
- The victim was lastly seen in the company of the appellant
- her dead body was recovered at the instance of the appellant
- the appellant had failed to satisfactorily explain his whereabouts and his knowledge of the location of the dead body
- The medical and other scientific evidence was consistent with the accusation.
The court noted that both the Trial Court as also the High Court have taken the abhorrent nature of the crime alone to be the decisive factor for awarding death sentence in the present case. the court agrees that the present case is a heinous crime and it shocks the conscience but at the same time, the court notice that the appellant has no criminal antecedents, comes from a very poor socio-economic background, has a family comprising of wife, children, and aged father, and has unblemished jail conduct. The bench held that the present case does not fall under the “rarest of rare” category and it commute the death sentence into life imprisonment
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