Supreme Court (file photo)

NEW DELHI: At a time when the execution of the Nirbhaya case convicts is getting repeatedly postponed, the Supreme Court has commuted the death sentence of a man found guilty of killing three children in cold blood nine years ago.

A bench of Justices U U Lalit , Indira Banerjee and M R Shah concurred with the findings of the trial court and the Chhattisgarh high court to hold Manoj Suryavanshi guilty of killing two boys aged eight and six, and a four-year-old girl but commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment, which should last a minimum of 25 years, taking into account the murderer’s mental condition at the time of crime.

Suryavanshi had said he kidnapped and murdered the children when they were returning home from school to take revenge on their father, whose younger brother had eloped with his wife. “The mental condition of the accused at the time of commission of the offence … due to his wife’s elopement with the uncle of the deceased and [that] his children were deprived of the company of their mother, the mitigating circumstances are in favour of the accused to convert the death sentence to life imprisonment,” it said.

Writing the judgment for the bench, Justice Shah referred to just punishment theory and said, “It is true that the court must respond to the cry of society and to settle what would be the deterrent punishment for an abominable crime. It is also equally true that a larger number of criminals go unpunished, thereby increasing criminals in society and law losing its deterrent effect.”

“It is also true that the peculiar circumstances of a given case often result in miscarriage of justice and make the justice delivery system a suspect; in the ultimate analysis, society suffers and a criminal gets encouraged. Sometimes, it is stated that only rights of criminals are kept in mind, the victims are forgotten. However, at the same time, while imposing the rarest of rare punishment, that is the death penalty, the court must balance mitigating and aggravating circumstances of the crime and it would depend upon particular and peculiar facts and circumstances of each case.”

Referring to guidelines laid down by the SC in the Bachan Singh case for bracketing a case in the rarest of rare category warranting imposition of death penalty after weighing aggravating and mitigating circumstances, the bench said, “The mitigating circumstances in the present case, if considered cumulatively and ,more particularly, that the accused was under extreme mental disturbance because of the reasons stated herein above, we are of the opinion that, in the peculiar facts and circumstances of the case, the death penalty is not warranted and the same be converted to life imprisonment.”

