SC awards life term to man for rape, murder of B'luru techie

The Supreme Court on Tuesday sentenced a man to life imprisonment for the rape and murder of an IT employee while driving her home in Bengaluru and ordered that he should not be released from jail until he has served 30 years incarceration.

In its judgement, a bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Rajesh Bindal also declared that when a constitutional court finds that though a case does not fall in the “rarest of the rare” category, in view of gravity of the offence, it can always impose a fixed-term sentence so that the benefit of statutory remission, etc is not available to the accused.

The matter before the court related to the question of sentence only as convict- appellant Shiva Kumar submitted that the trial court ordered him to serve life sentence till the remainder of his life. The high court had dismissed his appeal.

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The bench said this is a case where a constitutional court must exercise the power of imposing a special category of modified punishment as it ordered that the appellant should be released only after he completed 30 years of actual sentence.

“The life of the victim, a married woman and happily working in a prominent company, was cut short in this brutal manner at the age of 28 years,” the bench noted.

After going through the facts of the case, the bench raised concern over safety of women working in IT sectors.

“Bengaluru is known as the Silicon Valley of India. Some of these companies have customers abroad and that is why the company staff members work at night. The issue is of safety and security of women working with such companies,” Justice Oka wrote on behalf of the bench.

The appellant’s counsel, for his part, cited SC’s judgements in ‘Union of India vs V Sriharan alias Murugan & Ors’ (2016) and ‘Swamy Shraddananda (2) alias Murali Manohar Mishra vs State of Karnataka’ (2008), to contend that a fixed term sentence or modified sentence can be imposed by constitutional courts in death penalty cases only.

Notably, when an offender is sentenced to undergo imprisonment for life, the incarceration can continue till the end of his life. However, this is subject to a grant of remission under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 and the constitutional powers vested in the Governor and the President of India.

Referring to the Sriharan case, the bench explained the Constitution bench has held that there is a power which can be derived from the IPC to impose a fixed term sentence or modified punishment which can only be exercised by the high court or in the event of any further appeal, by the Supreme Court and not by any other court.

In addition, the Constitution bench also held that power to impose a modified punishment of providing any specific term of incarceration or till the end of convict’s life as an alternative to death penalty, can be exercised only by the high court and the Supreme Court and not by any other inferior court, the bench added.