The death sentence given to a constable for murdering three people has been commuted to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court, which observed that he shot the victims only once while inebriated.
“Each of the victims was shot at only once. The repeated firing by the appellant is an over-reaction of an inebriated brain to a petty issue,” a bench of Justices R V Raveendran and B Sudershan Reddy said, while altering the death sentence imposed on constable Des Raj.
No excuse
However, the apex court pointed out that drunkenness cannot be an excuse for any brutal or diabolic act.
Hence, it said the conviction for the triple murder was valid but the death penalty has to be altered to life imprisonment as the offence did not meet the requirement of “rarest of rare” cases to warrant capital punishment. Des Raj, a constable with Punjab Police, shot dead his neighbours Manjit Kaur, Bhagwan Singh and Lal Singh,  after they objected to the dumping of garbage in front of their house by the policeman’s family.
Three others — Chand Singh (Manjit Kaur’s husband), his nephew Tarlok Singh and a child named Raveena — suffered injuries in the firing.