TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1979 (2) TMI 214
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....enlightened conscience and sensitized judgment of the Court. 2. A narration of facts is normally necessary at this early stage but we relegate it to a later part, assuming for the nonce the monstrosity of the murder in each case. Is mere shock at the horrendous killing sufficient alibi to extinguish one more life, de hors circumstances, individual and social, motivational and psychical? The crime and the criminal, contemporary societal crisis, opinions of builders and moulders of the nation, cultural winds of world change and other profound factors, spiritual and secular, and above all, constitutional, inarticulately guide the Court's faculty in reading the meaning of meanings in preference to a mechanistic interpretation of Section 302 I.P.C. projected in petrified print from Macaulay's vintage mint. 3. We banish the possible confusion about the precise issue before us-it is not the constitutionality of the provision for death penalty, but only the canalisation of the sentencing discretion in a competing situation. The former problem is now beyond forensic doubt after Jagmohan Singh v. State of Utter Pradesh 1973CriLJ370 and the latter is in critical need of tangible....
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....f Section 302, I.P.C. during the last hundred years. THE OLD TEXT AND THE NEW LIGHT Section 302. Whoever commits murder shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine. 5. Such stark brevity leaves a deadly discretion but beams little legislative light on when the court shall hang the sentencee or why the lesser penalty shall be preferred. This facultative fluidity of the provision reposes a trust in the court to select. And 'discretionary navigation in an unchartered sea is a hazardous undertaking unless recognised and recognizable principles, rational and constitutional, are crystallised as 'interstitial legislation' by the highest court. The flame of life cannot flicker uncertain and so Section 302 I.P.C. must be invested with pragmatic concreteness that inhibits ad hominem responses of individual judges and is in penal conformance with constitutional norms and world conscience. Within the dichtomous frames-work of Section 302 I.P.C, upheld in Jagmohan Singh, we have to evolve working rules of punishment bearing the markings of enlightened flexibility and societal sensibility. Hazy law, where human life hangs in the b....
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....le may not be acceptable. The hard evidence of the accompanying "kit of cases" compels the conclusion that, at least in contemporary India, Mr. Justice Douglas' argument in Furman v. Georgia 408 U.S. at 238 is correct: that arbitrariness and uneven incidence are inherent and inevitable in a system of capital punishment; and that therefore-in Indian constitutional terms, and in spite of Jagmohan Singh-the retention of such a system necessarily violates Article 14 guarantee of "equality before the law. 7. The author further observes: One source of the confusion seems to have been an under-current of disagreement as to the correctness and applicability of the argument in Ediga Anamma. But the only direct challenge has been in Bishan Dass v. State of Punjab 1975CriLJ461 (January 10, 1975 : Case 52) and, with respect, the challenge there seems clearly misconceived. What a study of the decisions of the higher courts on the life-or-death choice shows is that judicial impressionism still shows up and it is none too late to enunciate a systematised set of criteria or at least reliable beacons Ediga Annamma (supra) in terms, attempted this systematisation: Let us ....
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.... a merely pedantic legal text but handed down a constellation of human values, cherished principles and spiritual norms which belight old codes and imperial laws and impel new interpretations and legislations to tune up the New Order. The Indian Penal Code must be sensitized by the healing touch of the Preamble and Part III. Wrote Wheeler, J : Dwy v. Connecticut Co., 89 Conn. 74. That court best serves the law which recognises that the rules of law which grew up in a remote generation may, in the fullness of experience, be found to serve another generation badly, and which discards the old rule when it finds that another rule of law represents what should be according to the established and settled judgment of society.... Benjamin N. Cardozo, said :(The Nature of the Judicial Process by Benjamin N.Cardozo) If judges have woefully misinterpreted the mores of their day, or if the mores of their day are no longer those of ours, they ought not to tie, in helpless submission, the hands of their successOrs. 9. Such a solution to the death/life alternatives, where the Code leaves the Judge in the cold, has its limits. "Justice Homes put his view pithily when he sai....
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.... judges with a very wide discretion in the matter of fixing the degree of punishment. The discretion in the matter of sentence is, as already pointed out, liable to be corrected by superior courts. (p. 35) 13. What is important to remember is that while rigid prescriptions and random prescriptions which imprison judicial discretion may play tricks with justice, the absence, altogether, of any defined principles except a variorum of rulings may stultify sentencing law and denude it of decisional precision. 'Well-recognised principles' is an elegant phrase. But what are they, when minds differ even on the basics 14. Fluctuating facts and keleidoscopic circumstances, bewildering novelties and unexpected factors, personal vicissitudes and societal variables may defy standard-setting for all situations; but that does not mean that humane principles should be abandoned and blanket discretion endowed, making life and liberty the plaything of the mentality of human judges. Benjamin Cardozo has pricked the bubble of illusion about the utter objectivity of the judicial process:(The Nature of the Judicial Process by Benjamin N.Cardozop.167 I have spoken of the forces of....
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....ionality of Section 302 I.P.C. and the holding was that 'the death sentence imposed after trial in accordance with procedure established by law is not unconstitutional'. The acceptance of the invulnerability of discretionary power does not end the journey; it inaugurates the search for those, 'well recognised principles' Palekar, J., speaks of in the Jagmohan case. Incidental observations without concentration on the sentencing criteria are not the ratio of the decision. Judgments are not Bible for every line to be venerated. 17. When the legislative text is too bald to be self-acting or suffers zigzag distortion in action, the primary obligation is on Parliament to enact necessary clauses by appropriate amendments to Section 302 I.P.C. But if legislative undertaking is not in sight judges who have to implement the Code cannot fold up their professional hands but must make the provision viable by evolution of supplementary principles even if it may appear to possess the flavour of law-making. Lord Dennings' observations are apposite: Many of the Judges of England have said that they do not make law. They only interpret it. This is an illusion which t....
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....ublimated class complex and other odd factors enter the sentencing calculus. Stranger still, a good sentence of death by the trial court is sometimes upset by the Supreme Court because of Law's delays. Courts have been directed execution of murderers who are mental cases, who do not fall within the McNaghten rules, because of the insane fury of the slaughter. A big margin of subjectivism, a preference for old English precedents, theories of modern penology, behavioral emphasis or social antecedents, judicial hubris or human rights perspectives, criminological literacy or fanatical reverence for outworn social philosophers buried in the debris of time except as part of history-this plurality of forces plays a part in swinging the pendulum of sentencing justice erratically. Therefore, until Parliament speaks, the court cannot be silent. (Hopefully, Section 302 I.P.C. is being amended, at long last, but it is only half-way through as the Rajya Sabha proceedings show. We will revert to it later). 21. Prof. Blackshield, on an analytical study of Indian death sentence decisions, has remarked with unconventional candour: But where life and death are at stake, inconsistenci....
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....ern for social justice as setting the sights of individual justice, interact with the inherited text of the Penal Code to yield the goals desiderated by the Preamble and Articles 14, 19 and 21. 24. Nor can courts be complacent in the thought that even if they err the clemency power will and does operate to save many a life condemned by the highest court to death. For one thing, the uneven politics of executive clemency is not an unreality when we remember it is often the violent dissenters, patriotic terrorists, desperadoes nurtured by the sub-culture of poverty and neurotics hardened by social neglect, and not the members of the Establishment or conformist class, who get executed through judicial and clemency processes. Executive commutation is no substitute for judicial justice; at best it is administrative policy and at worst pressure-based partiality. In either case, that court self-condemns itself which awards death penalty with a sop to its conscience that the habitual clemency of Government will soften the judicial excess in sentence. If justice under the law justifies the lesser sentence it is abdication of judicial power to inflict the extreme penalty and extraneous to ....
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....t overpower traditional 'terrorism' in the practice of sentencing. When this stage is reached and formulation of guidelines made, we will consider the criminological foundations of theories of punishment which harmonise with the human rights jurisprudence of our cultural cosmos. Finally, we will set down the salient cynosures for judges in their day-to-day labours. 27. One sentencing aspect which has found prominent place in the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973, but more often ignorantly ignored, needs to be highlighted for future guidance. The cases actually demanding decision, their factual matrices and the actual application of the principles we have formulated to the appeals under consideration are the decisive part of the judgment. 28. The sister Codes-the Indian Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code are interwoven into the texture of sentencing. So much so, the various' changes in Section 367 of the Procedure Code, 1898 and its re-incarnation in Section 354 of the Code of 1973 impact on the interpretation of Section 302 of the Penal Code. The art of statutory construction seeks aid from connective tissues, as it were, of complementary enactments. This mode....
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.... and it is in the air": Rajya Sabha Debates, April 25, 1958, Cols. 444-528. In 1961 a further Resolution, moved in the Rajya Sabha by Mrs. Savitry Devi Nigam, was negatived after debate. 34. In 1962, however Resolution moved in the Lok Sabha by Raghu-nath Singh received more serious attention : Lok Sabha Debates, April 21, 1962, Cols. 307. The Resolution was withdrawn, but only after the government had given an undertaking that a transcript of the debate would be forwarded to the Law Commission, for consideration in the context of its review of the Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code. The result was a separate Law Commission Report on Capital Punishment, submitted to the government in September, 1967. (supra) 35. At pages 354-55, the Law Commission summarized its main conclusions as follows: It is difficult to rule out that the validity of or the strength behind, many of the arguments for abolition. Nor does the commission treat lightly the argument based on the irrevocability of the sentence of death, the need for a modern approach, the severity of capital punishment, and the strong feeling shown by certain sections of public opinion in stressing deeper quest....
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.... public servant as the case may be, or had ceased to be such member or public servant; or (d) if the murder is of a person who had acted in the lawful discharge of this duty under Section 43 of the CrPC, 1973, or who had rendered assistance to a Magistrate or a police officer demanding his aid or requiring his assistance under Section 37 or section 129 of the said Code; or (e) if the murder has been committed by him, while under sentence of imprisonment for life, and such sentence has become final, be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine (3) Where a person while undergoing sentence of imprisonment for life is sentenced to imprisonment for an offence under Clause (e) of Sub-section (2) such sentence shall run consecutively and not concurrently.(Indian Penal Code (Amendment) Bill, 1972 as passed by Rajya Sabha) 39. Maybe, the fuller and finer flow of the constitutional stream of human dignity and social justice will shape the provision more reformatively. Suffice it to say that the battle against death penalty by parliamentary action is gaining ground and those who do live in the ivory tower-and Judges, hopef....
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.... vexed question of legal threat to life by way of death sentence has sought to express itself legislatively, the stream of tendency being towards cautious, partial abolition and a retreat from total retention. 42. The twin survey of attempted and half accomplished changes in the Penal Code and the statutory mutation, pregnant with significance, wrought into the procedure Code, definitely drives judicial discretion to a benign destination. The message of the many legislative exercises is that murder will ordinarily be visited only with life imprisonment and it is imperative that death sentence shall not be directed unless there exist "special reasons for such sentence." 43. The era of broad discretion when Jagmohan's case was decided has ended and a chapter of restricted discretion has since been inaugurated. This is a direct response, not merely to the humane call of the Constitution, but also to the wider cultural and criminological transformation of opinion on the futility of the law of 'Life for Life' 'red in tooth and claw'. No longer did judicial discretion depend on vague 'principles'. It became accountable to the strict requirements of Secti....
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.... of last resort at the frontiers of the law, and most likely in a, supreme constitutional court, the judge necessarily resorts to his own scheme of values. It may, therefore, be said that the most important thing about a judge is his philosophy; and if it be dangerous for him to have one, it is at all events less dangerous than the self-deception of having none. THE CODES, THE Constitution AND THE CULTURAL BACKDROP 48. Primarily we seek guidelines from the two Codes, in the omnipresence and omnipotence of the over-arching Constitution. The Indian cultural current also counts and so does our spiritual chemistry, based on divinity in everyone, catalysed by the Buddha-Gandhi compassion. 'Every saint has a past and every sinner a future'-strikes a note of reformatory potential even in the most ghastly crime. This axiom is a vote against 'death' and hope in 'life'. 49. Many humane movements and sublime souls have cultured the higher consciousness of mankind, chased death penalty out of half the globe and changed world view on its morality. We will, in the culminating part of our, judgment, cull great opinions to substantiate this assertion but content....
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....cretion" (supra) p. 34. 54. When life is at stake, can such frolics of fortune play with judicial verdicts? 55. The nature of the crime-too terrible to contemplate-has often been regarded a traditional peg on which to hang a death penalty. Even Ediga Annamma (supra) has hardened here. But 'murder most foul' is not the test, speaking scientifically. The doer may be a patriot, a revolutionary, a weak victim of an overpowering passion who, given better environment, may be a good citizen, a good administrator, a good husband, a great saint. What was Valmiki once? And that sublime spiritual star, Shri Aurobindo, tried once for murder but by history's fortune acquitted. 56. If we go only by the nature of the crime we get derailed by subjective paroxysm. 'Special reasons' must vindicate the sentence and so must be related to why the murderer must be hanged and why life imprisonment will not suffice. Decided cases have not adequately identified the manifold components of comprehensive sentencing. Resultantly, what is regarded as decisive is only relevant and what is equally telling remains untold. For reasons of 'special' grimness may be cancelled by ju....
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.... of consistency and the mandate against unreasoning disregard of material circumstances are implicit lest discretion attracts the acrid epigram of judicial caprice. 60. The dignity of the individual shall not be desecrated toy infliction of atrocious death sentence merely because there is a murder proved although crying circumstances demand the lesser penalty. To exemplify, supposing a boy of fifteen incited by his elder brothers, chases with them a murderer of their father and after hours of search confronts the villain and vivisects him in blood-thirsty bestiality. Do you hang the boy, blind to his dignity and tenderness intertwined? 61. We mean to illustrate the applicability, not to exhaust the variables. Even here we may make it clear that equality is not to be confounded with flat uniformity. The element of flexibility and choice in the process of adjudicating is precisely what justice requires in many cases. Flexibility permits more compassionate and more sensitive responses to differences which ought to count in applying legal norms, but which get buried in the gross and rounded-off language of rules that are directed at wholesale problems instead of particul....
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....stice and regards individual dignity and human divinity with sensitivity. So, such extra-ordinary grounds alone constitutionally qualify as 'special reasons' as leave no option to the court but to execute the offender if State and society are to survive. One stroke of murder hardly qualifies for this drastic requirement, however gruesome the killing or pathetic the situation, unless the inherent testimony oozing from that act is irresistible that the murderous appetite of the convict is too chronic and deadly that ordered life in a given locality or society or in prison itself would be gone if this man were now or later to be at large. If he is an irredeemable murderer, like a bloodthirsty tiger, he has to quit his terrestrial tenancy. Exceptional circumstances, beyond easy visualisation, are needed to fill this bill. 65. To repeat for emphasis, death-corporeal death-is adieu to fundamental rights. Restrictions on fundamental rights are permissible if they are reasonable. Such restriction may reach the extreme state of extinction only if it is so compellingly reasonable to prohibit totally. While sentencing, you cannot be arbitrary since what is arbitrary is per se unequ....
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....be recognised as such in England today. What may appear to be incontrovertible social justice to a resident of Quebec may wear a different aspect to a resident of Peking. If it could be possible for Confusius, Manu, Hammurabi and Solomon to meet together at a conference table, I doubt whether they would be able to evolve agreed formulae as to what constitutes social justice, which is a very controversial field.... In countries with democratic forms of Government public opinion and the law act and react on each other. 72. We may add that in a developing country, in the area of crime and punishment, social justice is to be rationally measured by social defence and geared to developmental goals. 73. Thus, we are transported to the region of effective social defence as a large component of social justice. If the murderous operation of a die-hard criminal jeopardizes social security in a persistent, planned and perilous fashion, then his enjoyment of fundamental rights may be rightly annihilated. 74. When, then, does a man hold out a terrible and continuing threat to social security in the setting of a developing country? He does so if, by his action, he not only murders but by....
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....e reformed in a few years' time by proper techniques of treatment imprisonment for life is good enough. But, on the other hand if he is far too hardened that it has become his second nature to murder, society cannot experiment with correctional strategy, for, when he comes out of jail, he may kill others. Such an incurable murderer deserves to be executed under the law as it stands. Difficult to imagine though, but even the bizarre may happen. The social setting, the individual factors and like imponderables still remain to be spelt out. While the world is spiralling spiritually towards a society without state sanctioned homicide, a narrow category may under current Indian societal distortions deserve death penalty although realistically the Law is held at bay by corporate criminals killing people through economic, product, environmental and like crimes. 76. Death penalty functionally fails to operate in this area for reasons not relevant to unravel here but theta justice often claims human lives by hanging sentences by a distorted' vision of the penological purposes and results. What we mean is that the retention of death sentence in Section 302 is rigorously restricted....
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....imes. A more humane and constructive remedy is to remove the culprit concerned from the normal milieu and treat him as a mental case. I am sure a large proportion of the murderers could be weaned away from their path and their mental condition sufficiently improved to become useful citizens, in a minority of cases, this may not be possible. They may be kept in prison houses till they die a natural death. This may cast a heavier economic burden on society than hanging. But I have no doubt that a humane treatment even of a murderer will enhance man's dignity and make society more human. (emphasis added) Andrie Sakharov, in a message to the Stockholm Conference on Abolition organised by Amnesty International last year, did put the point more bluntly: I regard the death penalty as a savage and immoral institution which undermines the moral and legal foundations of a society. A State, in the person of its functionaries, who like all people are inclined to making superficial conclusions who like all people are subject to influences, connections, prejudices and egocentric motivations for their behavior, takes upon itself the right to the most terrible and irrevers....
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....t effects calamitous in the Chambal dacoits' cases:Article by Dr.L.H.Hiranandani in Illustrated Weekly of India dt.29th August,1976. Take the classic example of the blood-thirsty dacoits of Chambal. The so-called dacoits, in reality the Thakurs of Delhi in the 12th century, were driven to the desolate Chambal Valley. They had no other recourse except to steal and, if necessary, murder for their survival. The 800 years injustice they suffered can be remedied only by their economic emancipation. Remember, no one is born a criminal. Sarvodaya leaders Jayaprakash Narain and Vinoba Bhave won over dacoits with love, affection and understanding- something sophisticated, automatic weapons failed to do. We have, unfortunately no follow-up study of this experiment. 81. Coming down to unhappy pragmatism, death penalty is permissible only where reformation within a reasonable range, is impossible. The confusion is simple but die-hard. We lawfully murder the murderer, not the murder, by infliction of capital sentence, for which the strictest justification is needed if human dignity assured by the Constitution is not to be judicially dismissed as an expendable luxury. 82. T....
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....e, the same type of cruel killing must be imposed on the killer. Secondly, can the hanging of the murderer bring the murdered back to life? 'The dull cold ear of death' cannot hear the cries or see the tears of the dying convict. There is a good case for huge fines, along with life-terms in sentences where the sum is realisable and payable to the bereaved. 86. The Indian Penal Code fabricated in the imperial foundry well over a century ago has not received anything but cursory parliamentary attention in the light of the higher values of the National Charter which is a testament of social justice. Our Constitution respects the dignity and, therefore, the divinity of the individual and preservation of life, of everyone's life. So the Court must permeate the Penal Code with exalted and expanded meaning to keep pace with constitutional values and the increasing enlightenment of informed public opinion. A nineteenth century text, when applied to twentieth century conditions, cannot be construed by signals from the grave. So, while courts cannot innovate beyond the law, the law cannot be viewed as cavemen's pieces. The penological winds of change, reflected in juristic....
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.... forensic rhetoric, deserved the extreme penalty. Penal law is not what the printed text professes but what the prison cell and the condemned man testify. 90. Courts take a close-up of the immediate circumstances not the milieu which made the murderer nor the environs which make him man again. In equal justice under the law, this imbalance of Section 302 I.P.C., in action cannot be missed. 91. The tradition-bound agencies of justicing cocooned by judicial precedents reflecting by-gone values make sentencing processes 'soft' where they should be severe and tainted with torture where a healing touch comports with culture. Indeed, the habitual cerebrations of both wings of the profession have been guiltless of the great experiment of injecting the humanism of the National Charter through the interpretative art into criminal statistics. Social justice on the one hand, means social defence from white-collar and kindred criminals not through procrastinating illusions of punishment but instant deterrents to anti-social delinquents and, on the other, Prison Justice, Reforms of offenders, non-institutional strategies through community participation in correction and, above all....
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....out escalation of murderous crime. Attempts to get round the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act, 1965 have failed in Parliament and as Barbara Wooton says, 'Capital punishment thus appeared to be itself sentenced to death' for murder. To quote the Royal Commission's recommendation for retention after Parliament has abolished death penalty is only of historical interest: "After the Abolition Act had been in force for over seven years, the Criminal Law Revision Committee considered whether any further changes in the penalty for murder were desirable. Their conclusions were almost entirely negative." 93. This perspective justifies judicial evolution of a humane penal doctrine because the legislative text is not static; and as Chief Justice Warren wrote in Trop v. Dulles the court 'must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of a maturing society'. The great answer to grave crime is culturing of higher consciousness, removing the pressure of a perverted social order, and nourishing the inner awareness of man's true nature. This is true penal reform, including jail reform. 94. A difficult category which defies easy solution, even in the developme....
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.... and Section 345(3) of the CrPC have to be read in the humane light of Parts III and IV, further illumined by the Preamble to the Constitution. In Sunil Batra(Sunil Batra v.Delhi Administration 1978CriLJ1741 a Constitution Bench of this Court has observed: Consciously and deliberately we must focus our attention, while examining the challenge, to one fundamental fact that we are required to examine the validity of a pre Constitution statute in the context of the modern reformist theory of punishment, jail being treated as a correctional institution" "Cases are not unknown where merely on account of a long lapse of time the Courts have commuted the sentence of death to one of life imprisonment on the sole ground that the prisoner was for a long time hovering under the tormenting effect of the shadow of death. The scheme of the Code, read in the light of the Constitution, leaves no room for doubt that reformation, not retribution, is the sentencing lode-star. (emphasis added) 2. The retributive theory has had its day and is no longer valid. Deterrence and reformation are the primary social goals which make deprivation of life and liberty reasona....
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....enture that sometimes there is big money in the subtle "murder" business disguised as economic offences or industrial clashes; and there social justice in certain circumstances punctures 'soft' justice and opts for lethal sentence. Where intractable mafia shows up in murderous profusion, the sentence of death must, reluctantly though, defend society. 7. The survival of an orderly society without which the extinction of human rights is a probability compels the higher protection of the law to those officers who are charged with the fearless and risky discharge of hazardous duties in strategic situations. Those officers of law, like policemen on duty or soldiers and the like have to perform their functions even in the face of threat of violence sometimes in conditions of great handicap. If they are killed by designers of murder and the law does not express its strong condemnation in extreme penalisation, justice to those called upon to defend justice may fail. This facet of social justice also may in certain circumstances and at certain stages of societal life demand death sentence. 8. When an environmental technologist, food and drug chemist or engine manuf....
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....e may be less shocking than other murders and yet the callous criminal, e.g. a lethal economic offender, may be jeopardizing societal existence by his act of murder. Likewise, a hardened murderer or dacoit or armed robber who kills and relishes killing, the raping and murdering to such an extent that he is beyond rehabilitation within a reasonable period according to current psycho-therapy or curative techniques may deserve the terminal sentence. Society survives by security for ordinary life. If officers enjoined to defend the peace are treacherously killed to facilitate perpetuation of murderous and often plunderous crimes social justice steps in to demand death penalty dependent on the totality of circumstances. 10. We must always have the brooding thought that there is a divinity in every man and that none is beyond redemption. But death penalty, still on our Code, is the last step in a narrow category where, within a reasonable spell, the murderer is not likely to be cured and tends to murder others, even within the prison or immediately on release, if left alive-a king cobra which, by chronic habit, knows only to sting to death unless defanged if possible. The patien....
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.... indefility pushed the criminal into the crime. On the other hand, the weapons used and the manner of their use, the horrendous features of the crime and hapless, helpless state of the victim, and the like, steel the heart of the law for a sterner sentence 1974CriLJ683 at 453. 104. In Srirangan v. State of Tamil Nadu 1978CriLJ186 the Court set aside a death sentence even though three had been killed. That was a case of three innocent lives put down without provocation and although the courts below had concurrently inflicted death sentence, a Bench of three judges confining the focus on sentence alone commuted the punishment. The crucial role of young age (in his twenties) and a trace of mental imbalance in robbing the propriety of a death impost even from such a ghastly case of tripe murder was emphasised. This Court's observations on the sensitive attitude to sentencing and the wide spectrums of considerations under Section 354(3) Cr.P.C. are helpful here: The plurality of factors bearing on the crime and the doer of the crime must carefully enter the judicial verdict. The winds of penological reform notwithstanding, the prescription in Section 302 binds the death ....
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....r this purpose reads as under: 235(1) After hearing arguments and points of law (if any), the Judge shall give a judgment in the case. (2) If the accused is convicted, the Judge shall, unless he proceeds in accordance with the provisions of Section 360, hear the accused on the question of sentence, and then pass sentence on him according to law. 108. A specific stage is prescribed in the trial of cases tried by the Sessions Court in accordance with the procedure prescribed in Chapter XVIII. After the prosecution evidence is complete and the accused is called upon to enter the defence and if evidence is led on behalf of defence, after the defence evidence is complete, the Court should hear arguments of the Prosecutor and the advocate on behalf of the accused (see Section 234). 109. Thereafter comes Section 235 which obligates the Court to give a judgment. The question of sentence does not enter the verdict or consideration at this stage. If the accused is to be acquitted, the matter ends there. If the Court, upon consideration of the evidence led before it, holds the accused guilty of any offence it must pronounce judgment to the extent that it holds accused ....
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....esources of the new provision to ensure socio-personal justice, instead of ritualising the submissions on sentencing by reference only to materials brought on record for proof or disproof of guilt. 113. The second major development is the amendment of Section 302 IPC moved by Government and already passed by the Rajya Sabha doing away with death penalty for murder save in exceptional categories. So far as it goes, the benignity of the change reflects the constitutional culture we have explained. The discretion still left, in our view, must be guided by the mariner's compass we have supplied in this Judgment. THE FACTS AND CONCLUSIONS 114. Having stated the law at length, we have to apply it to the facts of the cases, which we proceed to state. After all, "Let the facts be known as they are, and the law will sprout from the seed and turn its branches towards the light".Benjamin Nathan Cardozo "What Medicine Can Do For Law"Address before the New York Academy of Medicine Nov.1,1928. We may now state the facts needed for the application of the principles set out above. RAJENDRA PRASAD'S CASE 115. A long-standing family feud, with years-long roots, let to a tragic....
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....description to brand a person. Seldom is the other side of the story exposed to judicial view-the failure of penal institutions to cure criminality and their success in breaking the spirit or embittering it. 117. Prasad's prison term never 'cured' him. Who bothered about cure? The blame for the second murder is partly on this neglect. 118. Nothing on record suggests that Rajendra Prasad was beyond redemption; nothing on record hints at any such attempt inside the prison Lock-up of a criminal for long years behind stone walls and iron bars, with drills of breaking the morale, will not change the prisoner for the better Recidivism is an index of prison failure, in most cases. Any way, Rajendra showed no incurable disposition to violent outbursts against his fellow-men. We see no special reason, to hang him out of corporeal existence. But while awarding him life imprisonment instead, we direct for him mental-moral healing courses through suitable work, acceptable meditational techniques and psychotherapic drills to regain his humanity and dignity. Prisons are not human warehouses but humane retrieval homes. 119. Even going by precedents like Lalla Singh (supra) th....
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....ction 302 read with Section 34 I.P.C. and awarded life imprisonment. The appeal of the latter was allowed and that of the former dismissed both on crime and punishment. The learned Judges expressed themselves thus: Considering that Sheo Shankar, appellant caused the death of three persons so closely related to him, by stabbing each of them in the chest one after the other, and that too on no greater provocation than that there had been an exchange of abuses, I do not see how it can be said that sentence of death errs on the side of severity. It was urged that this appellant was only 17, 18 years old and so in view of the ruling of the Supreme Court in Harnam v. State 1976CriLJ1642 he should not' be sentenced to death. In the first place, the note of learned Session's Judge on his statement shows that he was 19, 20 years old and he had understated his age. Secondly, I doubt that the observation of the Supreme Court in the said case can be applicable to such a case of triple murder, where such victim is deliberately stabbed in the chest. The whole reasoning crumbles on a gentle probe. A thumbnail sketch of the case is that the appellant, his father and his brother....
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....an issue as death sentence. Nor are we satisfied with the court vaguely distinguishing a ruling of this Court. It is not the number of deaths caused nor the situs of the stabs that is telling on that decision to validate the non-application of its ratio. It is a mechanistic art which counts the cadavers to sharpen the sentence oblivious of other crucial criteria shaping a dynamic, realistic policy of punishment. 126. Three deaths are regrettable, indeed, terrible. But it is no social solution to add one more life lost to the list. In this view, we are satisfied that the appellant has not received reasonable consideration oh the question of the appropriate sentence. The criteria we have laid down are clear enough to point to the softening of the sentence to one of life imprisonment. A family feud, an altercation, a sudden passion, although attended with extra-ordinary cruelty, young and malleable age, reasonable prospect of reformation and absence of any conclusive circumstance that the assailant is a habitual murderer or given to chronic violence-these catena of circumstances tearing on the offender call for the lesser sentence. 127. It is apt to notice in this context that e....
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.... of jurisprudence, then the law of sentencing is Cinderella's illegitimate baby."Sentencing and Probation"-National College of the State Judiciaary,Reno,Nevada,p.1. 131. After all, the famous words of Justice Holmes "The Law must keep its promises" must be remembered. 132. The appeals stand allowed and the death sentences stand reduced to life imprisonment; and, hopefully, human rights stand vindicated. A.P. Sen, J. 133. In an appeal confined to sentence under Article 136 of the Constitution, this Court has not only the power, but as well as the duty to interfere if it considers that the appellant should be sentenced 'differently', that is, to set aside the sentence of death and substitute in its place the sentence of imprisonment for life, where it considers, taking the case as a whole, the sentence of death to be erroneous, excessive or indicative of an improper exercise of discretion; but at the same time, the Court must impose some limitations on itself in the exercise of this broad power. In dealing with a sentence which has been made the subject of an appeal, the Court will interfere with a sentence only where it is 'erroneous in principle'. Th....
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....n accordance with the Stockholm Declaration of the Amnesty International. He believes that the death penalty is not only physically but psychologically "brutal", referring to the lengthy period between sentencing and execution as a "lingering death". He recalls the names of many patriots who faced the firing squad or died by the hangmen's noose, in the cause of the country's freedom, and pleads that it is the duty of the State to protect the life of all persons without exception. He asserts that by its application, the death penalty contradicts the very sanctity of life which all human society claims to hold among the highest values. He tells us that almost all civilised countries have abolished it as a symbol of their respect for human life, and expresses deep anguish that we, in our country, still cling to it with little regard to the basic rights of the man. 139. I fully reciprocate the feelings of my learned brother Krishna Iyer J. in so far as he speaks of the barbarity involved in killing of patriots who have sacrificed their lives in the country's struggle for freedom. The citizen's right, to life and personal liberty are guaranteed by Article 21 of the Co....
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....ysis, the safest possible safeguard for the accused. Nor it could be said that Section 302 confers uncontrolled and unguided discretion to Judges in the matter of sentence and is, therefore, hit by Article 14. The Court further held that Section 302 did not contravene Article 21 of the Constitution insofar as the trial was held as per provisions of the CrPC 1973 and the Evidence Act 1872 which were undoubtedly part of the procedure established by law. 143. I, therefore, take it that the opinion of my learned colleague that imposition of a death sentence in a case outside the categories indicated would be constitutionally invalid, is merely an expression of his personal views. As Judges we are not concerned with the morals or ethics of a punishment. It is but our duty to administer the law as it is and not to say what it should be. It is not the intention of this Court to curtail the scope of the death sentence under Section 302 by a process of judicial construction inspired by our personal views. The question whether the scope of the death sentence should be curtailed or not, is one for the Parliament to decide. The matter is essentially of political expediency and, as such, it ....
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....ted before the resolution is carried out". This ought to be done in order that everyone may realise the dessert of his deeds. 149. Montesquieu in L'Esprit des Lois regarded the death penalty as repugnant, but necessary-"the remedy of a sick society". John Stuart Mill, made a very strong speech in the House of Commons (Parliamentary Debates,3ed ser.,vol.191,cols.1047-48,1050,1953) advocating the use of the death penalty when it was applied to the most heinous cases. Attacking the argument that this punishment was not a deterrent to crime, he said: As for what is called the failure of death sentence, who is able to judge that. We partly know who those are whom it has not deterred; but who is there who knows whom it has deterred, or how many human beings saved who should have lived. Mill felt that the probability of an innocent person's suffering the death penalty was very slight indeed. Judges and juries would let the guilty escape before the innocent would suffer. If there were the slightest doubt of a man's innocence the death sentence would not be imposed or carried out. 150. Sir Henry Maine, the English legal historian, observed that punishment evolv....
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....priori argument proceeds on the view that by doing so, the law helps to foster in the community a special abhorrence of murder as "a crime of crimes". By reserving the death penalty for murder the criminal law stigmatises the gravest crime by the gravest punishment, so that the element of retribution merges into that of deterrence. The second justifies the ethics of capital punishment. Whatever be the ultimate justification for the punishment, the law cannot ignore the public demand for retribution which heinous crimes undoubtedly provoke; it would be generally agreed that, though reform of the criminal law ought sometimes to give a lead to public opinion, it is dangerous to move too far in advance of it. 153. The movement to abolish death penalty started with the humanitarian doctrine evolved by Marchese De Cesars Bonesana Beccaria, Italian publicist. In 1764, Bonesana published the famous little treaties Dei Delitti e della Pene Beccaria-Bonesana:An Essay on crimes and punishment ,Academic Reprints,Stanford,California,1953. The French translation contained an anonymous preface by Voltaire. In the preface to this book first appeared the phrase "the greatest happiness of the gre....
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....lopment, this motive has been supplemented, but never wholly supplanted, by an unquestioning faith in the deterrent effect on potential offenders of exemplary, i.e., drastic, punishment, inflicted on actual offenders which, in practice if not in theory, comes to much the same thing. 157. The doctrine of the "individualisation of punishment", that is to say of the punishment of the individual rather than the crime committed by him, which is of commanding importance in present day penology, is only a development of the neo-classical school of the revolutionary period in France, which modified Beccaria's rigorous doctrine by insisting on the recognition of the varying degrees of moral, and therefore, legal responsibility. Its fundamental doctrine is that the criminal is doomed by his inherited traits to a criminal career and is, therefore, a wholly irresponsible actor. Society must, of course, protect itself against him, but to punish him as if he were a free moral agent is as irrational as it is unethical. 158. In his 'Introduction to Principles of Morals and Legislation', the great work in which the English philosopher and jurist, Jeremy Bentham was engaged for man....
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.... the same thing but its equivalent, and, what this is, can only be estimated if the whole context is taken into account. It may be argued that murder for instance, as the one crime which is quite irrevocable, as justly met by the one punishment which is equally irrevocable, a unique form of punishment for a unique form of crime. To reduce its punishment to something of the same order as other punishments, is to weaken the abhorrence which it should express and diffuse. On this showing an execution expresses absolute condemnation. It both satisfies and educates the public conscience; for those in authority thus deepen in themselves and diffuse throughout the community their sense of "the wickedness of wickedness, the criminality of crime". It is an outward and visible sign of the utmost imaginable disgrace. The death penalty has signified shame and infamy and has generally been understood to do so; and all this is expressed in symbolic action of a kind that is both spontaneous and calculated to arrest attention. 162. If the appeal of capital punishment were merely to fear of death, it would be a very inefficient protector of society. In civilized society and in peacetime, governm....
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....erring other criminals, as protection for the law-abiding and as a way of rehabilitating the criminal. The individual who has inflicted harm on another, runs the revenge argument, should be made to suffer in return; for only an act of vengeance can undo the harm that has been done and assuage the suffering of the victim. 165. As against this, some social reformers have maintained that punishment ought to be decent to transform the values and attitudes of the criminal so that he no longer wishes to commit illegal acts. The problem, of course, has been to discover how to do it. Theories of rehabilitation are largely speculative, since there is lack of scientific evidence to support them. Nevertheless, it has been influential in the development of modern penology. 166. In England, during the Nineteenth Century, Disraeli and Gladstone, the leading politicians in the country, took no part in the movement to abolish the death penalty. Leadership in this crusade fell to lesser men, and the abolitionists formed a distinct minority. The majority in the House of Commons evidently felt, as Sir John Holkar, the Attorney General felt, that criminals were deterred from adding deliberate mu....
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....f the power should be narrowly confined. 170. As a justification for retention of death penalty, some of these distinguished Judges put forth the principle of retribution, and the others placed greater importance on deterrence. There was, however, general agreement that justification for the capital sentence, as for other salient features of the penal system must be sought in the protection of the society and that alone. 171. The punishment of death, said Lord Denning to the Royal Commission, Royal Commission Report, p. 18 para 53 should reflect adequately the revulsion felt for the gravest of crimes by the great majority of citizens. But, in saying this, he implied that legislators and Judges share this revulsion themselves; otherwise indeed their action would be morally indefensible. Their aim then should be, not only to strike terror nor even to awaken popular indignation in a direction convenient to Government. It would be to arouse in all and sundry their own indignant repudiation of a wicked act and, at the same time, to deepen it in themselves. In this vein, sentence of death has been pronounced, carried out and acclaimed, with stern satisfaction. This principle of act....
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.... Templewood : The Shadow of the Gallows, Victor Gollancz : Capital Punishment : The Heart of the Matter. It brought about a division of criminal homicide into degrees of murder. It resulted in the establishment of a distinction between capital and non-capital murders. It not only eliminated long-standing iniquities and rigidities in the law of murder such as the doctrine of "constructive malice", but also brought the law into accord with modern criminological thoughts by the importation of the doctrine of "diminished responsibility". 175. By Section 7 the Act abolished the liability to suffer the death penalty on conviction of murder and substituted the sentence of imprisonment for life by Section 9, Sub-section (1) except in cases Of first degree murders falling within Section 5 or Section 6. Section 5 reserved the death penalty for five classes of first degree murders, namely: (i) any murder done in the course or furtherance of theft; (ii) any murder by shooting or by causing an explosion; (iii) any murder done in the course or for the purpose of resisting or avoiding or preventing a lawful arrest, or of effecting or assisting an escape or rescue fro....
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....1; piracy with violence (Piracy Act 1837) Section 2; setting fire to the Queen's ships, arsenals etc. (Dockyards etc. Protection Act 1772) Section 1. When a person is convicted of treason, sentence of death must be pronounced, but in case of piracy with violence and setting fire to the Queen's ships, arsenals, etc., it may be merely recorded. Sentence of death cannot, however, be pronounced on or recorded against ah expectant mother [Sentence of Death (Expectant Mothers) Act 1931] Section 1, or against a person who was under the age of eighteen when the offence was committed (Children and Young Persons Act 1933) Section 53(1). 180. The successful campaign to abolish the death penalty in Britain has been achieved in a comparatively short period of time by no more than a handful ardent penal reformers like Sydney Silverman, who carried out the unfinished work of Romilly and other reformers, pertinacious in their lobbying and propaganda in the face of majority opinion favouring retention of an admittedly barbaric but, to that majority, necessary penal instrument. If the final debates were protracted-Silverman's private members' Bill (with invaluable legislative time....
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....to death the two youngmen who when they committed the murder were under the age of eighteen years, but when they were convicted of the offence and sentenced to death, had both attained the age of 18 years. The mandatory sentence of death upon conviction for murder is imposed by Section 2 of the Offences against the Person Act 1925. The exception on account of youth is contained in Section 29(1) of the Juveniles Law which interdicts that a sentence of death shall not be pronounced on or recorded against a person under the age of 18 years. The Judicial Committee while holding that the statutory exemption from death penalty under Section 29(1) of the Juveniles Law was not applicable, observed that the time for ascertaining whether the appellants were to be treated as Juveniles was the date on which the sentence was passed and not the date of the offence. As to the constitutional issue, the Judicial Committee held that when a person was held guilty of a charge of murder, the death sentence passed on him cannot be treated as a contravention of Section 20(7) of the Constitution of Jamaica, stating: One's opinion as to whether the consequences of giving effect to the Sub-sect....
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....tution a meaning which it is incapable of bearing, but it conflicts with the very concept of the nature of law. 188. That takes us to the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in Furman v. Georgia (supra) in which my learned brother Krishna Iyer J. strongly relies. There, the question was whether the death penalty at least as generally practised in the United States, per se, was 'cruel and unusual' because the imposition of capital punishment "does not comport with human dignity" or because it was "morally unacceptable" and "excessive" and thus violative of the Eighth Amendment. 189. In the United States of America, the death penalty has paradoxically existed more or less harmoniously with humane theories of criminal justice for over two hundred years. The Eighth Amendment prohibits 'cruel and unusual punishment'. 190. The Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment has raised some very difficult moral issues. The Supreme Court applied various standards in interpreting the provision. In Trop v. Dulles [1958] 356 US 86 : 2 L.Ed. 630 the Court by a majority of five to four, refused to consider "the death penalty as an in....
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....dments. The Court issued a brief per curiam order, followed by substantial statements by every member of the Court. The judgment in the case was reversed and the cases remanded for further proceedings. Each of the five majority Justices and four dissenters wrote a separate opinion, supporting his position. 194. The five Justices in the majority each wrote a concurring opinion which approached the matter from a different angle so that clear categorisation is impossible. It can thus be seen that the multiple opinions did not rule out altogether re-imposition of the death penalty in the future provided there was legislative structuring of a permissible system providing for sufficient procedural safeguards. This is exactly what has happened in the United States where the death penalty has been re-imposed and the judicial approach stands re-oriented. 195. Broadly stated, Mr. Justice Douglas, Mr. Justice Stewart and Mr. Justice White held that the death Penalty as imposed, is arbitrarily and infrequently meted out, in violation of the Eighth and the Fourteenth Amendments. They took an analytic and empirical approach, appraising the practice under the Eighth Amendment in the light o....
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....nd properly the domain of the legislature, not the judiciary. 200. Chief Justice Burger, admitting that since the ruling a Trop v. Dulles (supra) in 1958, it is necessary to evaluate a challenged punishment in terms of the "evolving standards of decency...of a maturing society", felt nonetheless that there is no judicially significant public opposition to capital punishment in the United States. Pointing out that the decision rejecting the death penalty was essentially based on procedural grounds, as the majority agreed that the arbitrary infliction of the death penalty was unconstitutional, Burger contends that the Eighth Amendment does not deal with procedure, and with only the substantive nature of the punishment in question. He believes that the imposition of a mandatory death penalty for certain offences would not be invalidated by the holding in this case because a mandatory penalty could not be arbitrarily meted out. 201. Mr. Justice Powell dissented by establishing that the constitutionality of the death penalty is supported by four factors, viz., (i) the references to capital punishment in the Constitution, (ii) the past Supreme Court decisions on the death penalty, ....
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....exas [1976] 428 US 262 : 49 L.Ed. 2d 929, Woodson v. North Carolina [1976] 428 US 280 : 49 L.Ed. 2d 944, and Roberts v. Louisiana [1976] 428 US 325 : 49 L.Ed. 2d 974. 205. The issue in the three cases dealing with discretionary sentencing (Gregg, Proffitt and Jurek) was whether imposition of the sentence of death for the crime of murder under the laws of the respective states, violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. In all three, the Court reached the same conclusion, that the punishment of death did not invariably violate the Constitution. 206. The Court's reasons in Gregg as to why the death sentence was not a per se violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth amendments were as follows: First, history and precedent do not support the conclusion that the death sentence is a per se violation. Second, the evolving standards of decency argument has been substantially undercut in the last four years because a large segment of the enlightened population regards the death penalty as appropriate and necessary, as seen in the new legislation passed in response to Funnan. 207. The Court came to the conclusion that the death penalty was not inherently cruel and unusual. It s....
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....ther hand, to consider in detail some awful murder, and then to await the emergence either of a conviction that the death penalty must never be used or, alternatively, that it must never be completely abandoned. 210. The controversy over capital punishment is not new. Its roots lie deep in human history, and its battles have been waged on and off on a political level for almost two centuries. It is not necessary for this Court to attempt to analyse the substantive merits of the cases for and against the death penalty for murder. It is in my view, essentially, a question for the Parliament to resolve and not for this Court to decide. 211. I feel that it is futile for us to attempt to project our personal views in a matter which lies in the realm of political decision-making, by focussing on a single controversy, the question of the proper penalty for the crime of murder. The capital punishment controversy falls within the strict limits of 'independent' parliamentary law-making, and is a typical or representative of the kind of problems that leaders of Parliament face every day. In short, the case for abolition of the death sentence is political, not constitutional. The....
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....e Criminal Procedure Code (Amendment) Act, 1955 it was a well settled principle that where a person was convicted for an offence of murder, the Court was normally bound to sentence him to death unless there were extenuating or mitigating circumstances. This rule was stated in Rattanlal's Law of Crimes, 21st ed., p. 813; The extreme sentence is the normal sentence; the mitigated sentence is the exception. It is not for the Judge to ask himself whether there are reasons for imposing the penalty of death, but whether there are reasons for abstaining from doing so. The reason probably was that this provision was not more than the restatement of the law as it stood in England at that time, where till the year 1965 the only penalty for murder was death, except in two specific cases. 215. The effect of the Criminal Procedure Code (Amendment) Act, 1955, which repealed Section 367, Sub-section (5) of the Code with effect from January 1, 1956, was to restore to the Court the discretion conferred by Section 302 to award the appropriate sentence having regard to the attendant circumstances, including the mitigating circumstances, if any. This brought the law into conformity ....
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....uilt or innocence of the convicted person, it may make such inquiry or take such evidence itself, or direct it to be made or taken by the Court of Sessions. In a case submitted under Section 366, the High Court under Section 368(a) may either confirm the sentence, or pass any other sentence, i.e. reduce the sentence of death into a sentence of imprisonment for life. Thereafter, an appeal lies to this Court by a special leave under Article 136 on the question of sentence. 219. Failing the appeal, there is the President's power to grant reprieve and pardon under Article 72(1), as well as the Governor's power of commutation under Article 161 of the Constitution which is a sovereign function. The power of the President and of the Governor to grant reprieves and pardons is wide enough to include the power to commute and to remit sentence of punishment. All cases of capital punishment are closely scrutinised by the Executive at both the levels to see whether there are such extenuating circumstances as would justify a reprieve, and the power to commute a death sentence is freely exercised, whenever there is some doubt as to the severity of the punishment. Under the pr....
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...., individual existence comes to nought. So, one test for impost of death sentence is to find out whether the murderer offers such a traumatic threat to the survival of social order. To illustrate, if an economic offender who intentionally mixes poison in drugs professionally or wilfully adulterates intoxicating substances injuriously, and knowingly or intentionally causes death for the sake of private profit such trader in lethal business is a menace to social security and is, therefore, a violator of social justice whose extinction becomes necessary for society's survival. Supposing a murderous band of armed dacoits intentionally derails a train and large number of people die in consequence, if the ingredients of murder are present and the object is to commit robbery inside the train, they practise social injustice and imperil social security to a degree that death penalty becomes a necessity if the crime is proved beyond doubt. There may be marginal exceptions or special extenuations but none where this kind of dacoity or robbery coupled with murder becomes a contagion and occupation, and social security is so gravely imperiled that the fundamental rights of the defe....
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....ith. But unfortunately our penal laws do not provide for a death sentence for either white collar crimes or anti-social offences, although I wish they did, at least for certain anti-social offences. 223. There will be general measure of agreement that some of the serious anti-social offences call for a death sentence viz. acts of sabotage by a person who hijacks a plane and the like and large number of persons die or are injured in consequence, or disrupts lines of communications, or holds up a train and commits armed robbery with murder inside the train. He is a menace to the society and deserves a death sentence, as his existence does not conform to the national well-being. Like-wise, a person who indulges in theft or illegal trade and export of art treasures such as invaluable monuments, paintings and sculptures of historical importance and of priceless antiques of what remains of our national heritage, or in adulteration of articles of food meant for human consumption, or in manufacturing and selling of spurious drugs, or engages in illegal sale in narcotics or alcohol, which are injurious to the very life of the community, also deserves a death sentence, as in many other co....
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....iability to suffer the death sentence on conviction of murder and substitutes the sentence of imprisonment for life by Sub-section (1) except in cases of certain first degree murders falling within Sub-section (2) thereof. The cases in which the death sentence is to be retained are those where, in the view of the Government, murder is most dangerous to the preservation of law and order, and where the death sentence is likely to be a particularly effective deterrent, viz., pre-planned murders involving extreme brutality and murders involving exceptional depravity. The Bill is not before the Court. It is, therefore, not proper to deal with it. 229. It is, however, necessary to emphasise that if there has to be a law reform at all, some regard must be had to the plight of the victim or his or her family by making provision for payment of compensation. While it is commonly accepted that those convicted of violations of the criminal law must "pay their debt to society", little emphasis is placed upon requiring offenders to "pay their debt" to their victims. These again are matters for the Parliament to provide. 230. From a life time of experience, Sir John Beaumont, speaking with ....
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....ndhi Jayanti, committed the brutal murder of the deceased Mansukh by striking him with a knife. 234. On the date of occurrence, that is, on October 25, 1972, at about 11 a.m. the accused along with his brother Pooran rushed towards Sri Kishan, brother of Rambharosay, armed with a knife but Sri Kishan ran to safety and was not hurt. Later in the evening at about 5.30 p.m., the same day, while Rambharosay and the deceased Mansukh were standing in the lane in front of Rambharosay's house, the accused suddenly appeared and dealt several blows with the knife on vital parts of the body of Rambharosay but Rambharosay released himself from his grip and ran inside his house and bolted the door. The accused chased him all the way with the Wood-stained knife and knocked at the door asking him to open it. Meanwhile, the deceased Mansukh came and tried to entreat the accused not to assault Rambharosay. Thereupon the accused struck deceased Mansukh, who tried to escape, but the accused chased him over a distance of 200 to 250 feet and inflicted repeated knife blows on the deceased resulting in his death. The deceased was done to death by the accused merely because he tried to prevent him ....
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.... passed on him. The accused Sheo Shankar murdered his uncle Narottam Dubey, and his two sons Chandra Bhushan and Chandra Shekher. 240. On the date of occurrence, i.e., on June 15, 1976 after there was a partition of the joint family lands between the deceased Narottam and Purushottam, father of the accused Sheo Shankar, there was a dispute regarding division of three bataulis. The three bataulis could not be equally divided because they were of different sizes. The accused insisted that they should be broken and then partitioned. Smt. Vidyawati, widow of Narottam, in fact, in trying to pacify her brother-in-law Purushottam, brought out one batauli and the remaining two were taken out by Chandra Shekhar. It all happened over the act of Chandra Shekher in flinging the two batauli on the ground which collided making a sound showing his resentment. The expression of resentment implicit in the gesture of Chandra Shekhar infuriated the accused Sheo Shankar to such an extent that he committed the three murders in a row. These were nothing but first-degree murders. 241. The weapon used by the accused in committing the crime, the manner in which the operation was carried out, and the ....