NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday imposed a minimum of 25 years in jail on two persons who were concurrently awarded death sentence by trial court and Bombay High Court for the sensational kidnapping and killing of the eight-year-old son of a Nagpur-based dentist couple in 2014.A bench of Justices U U Lalit, Indu Malhotra and Hemant Gupta concurred with the trial court and High Court in finding that the prosecution proved the case beyond doubt about guilt of Arvind Singh and his associate in kidnapping of the innocent boy by posing as an employee of the clinic run by the dentist couple on September 1, 2014 deputing, then demanding ransom and finally murdering the child.However, the bench debated whether the case fell in the 'rarest of rare category' to warrant award of death sentence to the convicts, who were young men who committed the crime driven by the desire to become rich in a short time.Writing the judgment for the bench, Justice Gupta said, "we find that the accused have taken the life of a young school going boy of only 8 years of age to become rich by ransom and to take vengeance against the doctor. The argument is that since the accused are young, aged about 19 years, and have no criminal antecedents, the sentence of death imposed upon them is not warranted.""We do not find any merit in the argument that being young or having no criminal antecedents are mitigating circumstances. What is required to be examined is whether there is a possibility of rehabilitation and whether it is the rarest of the rare case where the collective conscience of the community is so shocked that it will expect the holders of judicial power to inflict death penalty irrespective of their personal opinion as regards desirability or otherwise of retaining death penalty. The manner of commission of murder when committed in an extremely brutal, grotesque, diabolical, revolting or dastardly manner are aggravating factors," the bench said."The motive of the accused to take life was to become rich by not doing hard work but by demanding ransom after kidnapping a young, innocent boy of 8 years. Thus, having considered all the circumstances and facts on record, we are of the considered view that the present case falls short of the “rarest of rare” cases where a death sentence alone deserves to be awarded to the appellants," it said.While confirming the conviction of the accused, the bench converted the death sentence to life imprisonment, with a caveat that life sentence meant imprisonment for entire life. "There shall not be any remission till the accused completes 25 years of imprisonment.," the SC said.