GUWAHATI: The Gauhati High Court has switched the death sentence of a convicted murderer to life imprisonment, citing the trial court's failure to consider the possibility of the convict's reformation, rehabilitation, and social reintegration. The convicted person was involved in the Assam Public Service Commission (APSC) cash-for-job case and had been sentenced to death for a murder committed in 2018.
A division bench of Justices Kalyan Rai Surana and Mridul Kumar Kalita observed that the trial court's imposition of the death penalty lacked special reasons, stating that the case did not fall into the "rarest of rare" category. They further noted that the mitigating factors in the case were sufficient to justify commutation.
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The case stems from a March 14, 2018, incident in which an informant found his niece dead with a cut on her neck. The informant witnessed the accused running away with a blood-stained dao (big butcher’s knife), leading to the accused's arrest. Subsequent investigations indicated that the accused, who had been involved in the APSC case, was responsible for the murder.
The trial court convicted the accused under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sentenced him to death. However, upon review, the High Court found that the trial court's judgement was influenced by the accused's prior criminal record, which consisted of allegations of misconduct that had not been legally substantiated.
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In their ruling, the High Court observed that a single cut on the victim's body does not meet the standard for the "rarest of rare" cases, justifying commutation to life imprisonment. Additionally, the bench emphasised that the extreme penalty of death should only be imposed when the possibility of reformation, rehabilitation, and social reintegration is ruled out, which was not the case here.
