Poverty a mitigating ground to convert death to life sentence: SC More than three decades after carving out ‘rarest of rare’ category of cases warranting award of death penalty, the Supreme Court found a new mitigating factor – poverty — to commute a convict’s death penalty to life imprisonment. “Poverty, socio-economic, psychic compulsions, undeserved adversities in life are thus some of the mitigating factors, in addition to those indicated in Bachan Singh and Machi Singh cases,” said a bench of Justices S J Mukhopadhaya and Kurian Joseph. A tailor was finding it difficult to make ends meet with his meagre income and had a wife and three children, two sons and a daughter, to support. One of the sons was suffering from asthma and needed constant medication. One night, he took a pair of scissors and repeatedly stabbed them. So vicious was the attack that the wife and two sons died without uttering a scream. The injured girl asked the father why he was hurting all of them when they had not done anything. The man’s fatherly instincts surfaced for a moment when he gave her water. But immediately afterwards, he tried to smother her with a pillow. Taking her to be dead, he bolted the door of the house from outside and went straight to the police station to confess. Both the trial court and the Bombay High Court held him guilty and were unanimous that the case fell within the ‘rarest of rare’ category and sentenced the tailor to death. The apex court too did not have a doubt about the guilt of the convict but wanted to examine the effect of poverty on his crime. “Socio-economic compulsions such as poverty are also factors that are to be considered by courts while awarding a sentence,” said Justice Kurian, who authored the judgment. “In the case before us, it has come in evidence that the appellant suffered from economic and psychic compulsions. The possibility of reforming and rehabilitating the accused cannot be ruled out. The accused had no prior criminal record. On the facts available to the court, it can be safely said that the accused is not likely to be menace or threat or danger to society. There is nothing to show that he had any previous criminal background. The appellant had in fact intended to wipe out the whole family including himself on account of abject poverty,” the court said. “The change of heart is discernible from the fact that he had given water to the injured daughter. After this, he no longer used the weapon for finishing her. He tried once again by taking her to his lap and stifling her with the aid of a pillow,” it said. Justices Mukhopadhaya and Joseph sentenced the man to life imprisonment for murdering his wife and two sons and sentenced him to seven years imprisonment for attempting to murder the daughter. It said the general rule is that a sentence for life imprisonment runs for the entire life of the convict. “However, we make it clear that in case the sentence of imprisonment for life is remitted or commuted to any specified period (in any case, not less than 14 years in view of Section 433A of the Criminal Procedure Code), the sentence of imprisonment under Section 307 of IPC (attempt to murder) shall commence thereafter,” it said. Source:TOI
Posted on: Thu, 12 Sep 2013 06:40:38 +0000
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