JOIN US'Only legislature can abolish capital punishment'
A two-judge Bench headed by Justice Markandey Katju said that the courts have to award the capital punishment to convicts in some cases after testing them to the criterion of “rarest of rare” otherwise it would tantamount to abolishment of the harshest punishment.
“It is only the legislature which can abolish the death penalty and not the courts. As long as the death penalty exists in the statute book it has to be imposed in some cases, otherwise it will tantamount to repeal of the death penalty by the judiciary. It is not for the judiciary to repeal or amend the law, as that is in the domain of the legislature,” the Court said.
“The very fact that it has been held that death penalty should be given only in the rarest of the rare cases means that in some cases it should be given and not that it should never be given,” the Bench also comprising Justice C K Prasad said.
The observations of the court reminded the critics of the punishment that the decision could only be taken at the level of the legislature.
Clarifying further, the bench said that a distinction has to be drawn between ordinary murders and murders which are “gruesome, ghastly or horrendous” by awarding death sentence in the latter category.
In the judgment, the apex court upheld the death sentence of Ajitsingh Harnamsingh Gujral, a businessman, for burning his wife and three children on April 10, 2003, to death after pouring petrol over them at his flat in Mumbai.
The Bench referred to testimony of witnesses to conclude “Gujral was a dictatorial personality who wanted to dominate over his family and was also hot tempered. He would even beat his wife (deceased) with a leather belt.”
Awarding the gallows to Gujral, the court noted that a man like the appellant who, instead of doing his duty of protecting his family, killed them in such a cruel and barbaric manner cannot be reformed or rehabilitated.
Justice Katju, writing the judgment, travelled through the legal developments having taken place in the country with regard to imposition of the death penalty.
The court also cited the Law Commission of India’s 35 th report which said that the capital punishment acted as a deterrent.