MUMBAI: Three days before the brutal gang-rape of Nirbhaya, the Supreme Court commuted a death sentence to life for a 23-year-old man who killed a 65-year-old woman and raped her pregnant 25-year-old granddaughter-in-law in an upscale Pune neighbourhood in September 2007.

The convict, Sandesh Abhang, had stabbed the old woman 21 times, severed four fingers of one hand and chopped off the other wrist. He then raped her granddaughter-in-law, stabbed her 19 times, including in her neck, and left believing her to be dead. He later boasted to his friends that he had killed two women and was not afraid of anyone. The woman was five-month pregnant and gave birth to her child later.

The SC bench of Justices Swatantar Kumar and Madan Lokur observed that though the accused had committed a very “heinous and brutal crime”, a “vital factor” that he “may not have been aware of what he was doing as he smelled of alcohol’’ could not be ruled out and hence his “abnormal behaviour” was relevant in holding against death penalty. The SC said to kill, “it was not expected of him to inflict 21and 19 injures on their bodies respectively. He could have simply given an injury on the vital parts of their bodies and put them to death… amputating the fingers clearly reflects the conduct of an abnormal person”.

The convict had sought leniency on the grounds that he was drunk and unaware of his own actions. But the state argued that the law allows intoxication as a defence only when the accused can prove that it was against his will and knowledge and when the effects are such that the person is rendered incapable of proper judgement of his own intent to commit a crime.

The SC said that in cases of capital punishment, reformation was a relevant criterion. In this case, it reasoned that the convict was young, had “no criminal involvement in similar crimes’’ and “no evidence (had been) produced by the Maharashtra government ’’ to show that he was a hardened criminal incapable of being reformed. This, it said, outweighed other factors against him.

The Bombay high court bench of Justices B H Marlapalle and Abhay Thipsay had in March 2011 upheld the death sentence awarded by a sessions court. The HC said Abhang should be shown no mercy as he was incapable of remorse or reform. The accused, a mechanic, had entered the house in the afternoon saying “sahib ne bheja hain” for some work. His intention was to rob, but angered that the older woman’s bangles were not of gold, he chopped her fingers and wrist.

The pregnant woman had helplessly pleaded with the accused to spare their lives and take away the valuables but even after taking the gold jewellery, he had in a cold-blooded manner killed the older woman by slashing her neck with his kukri, then at knife-point made the younger woman remove her clothes before raping her. The court observed that the younger woman “displayed wisdom and bravery. She received injuries on her back to protect the child in her womb and pretended to be dead by lying down quietly.’’

At 3 pm, the convict left the flat in Bibwewadi after washing himself and his weapon clean. The young woman later called out to her aunt residing in the flat below and was finally rushed to the hospital where she remained in the ICU for almost three weeks.

The HC observed that the accused showed unusual calm and perversity in raping a bleeding pregnant woman after killing one and then washing himself clean. It held his conduct and crime to be rarest of rare and beyond redemption. He would be a menace and threat to society, it said but the SC disagreed and said ‘’his conduct in jail was not shown to be unworthy of concession.’’

The HC and SC held that the evidence had proved the man’s guilt beyond doubt. In the SC, Abhang did not challenge his conviction but only pleaded against the death sentence. The SC said life imprisonment shall be for life.