'Hasty trial - meaningless, stage managed': SC sets aside death penalty of man as trial concluded in 15 days

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday set aside the death penalty awarded to a man for rape and murder of a three-month-old girl child in April, 2018 in Indore, after finding the trial in case was completed in "hurried manner" within 15 days without giving proper opportunity to the accused to defend himself.

A bench of Justices B R Gavai, P S Narasimha and Prashant Kumar Mishra said hasty trial would not only make itself meaningless and stage-managed, but would also be in violation of the principle of judicial calm. 

The court ordered de nova (fresh) trial in the case, after remitting the matter back to the Indore sessions court.

In the case, the trial was conducted on day-to-day basis and the order-sheet does not record that copies of statement of witnesses were supplied to the accused or his counsel, it is not known as to whether the defence counsel was supplied all the requisite material basing which he could have  advanced his final arguments, the bench pointed out.

Referring to the Supreme Court's judgement in the Best Bakery case, the bench pointed out it is thus settled that a hasty trial in which proper and sufficient opportunity has not been provided to the accused to defend himself/herself would vitiate the trial as being meaningless and stage-managed. "It is in violation of the principle  of judicial calm."

"In our view, in the hallowed halls of justice, the essence of a fair and impartial trial lies in the steadfast embrace of judicial calm. It is incumbent upon a judge to exude an aura of tranquillity, offering a sanctuary of reason and measured deliberation," the bench said.

The appellant Naveen alias Ajay was arrested in the case on April 20, 2018.

"In the case at hand, the prosecution is based on circumstantial evidence in which the prosecution has to prove each link in the chain of circumstantial evidence and the important chains in the link are DNA report, FSL report and  Viscera report," the bench said.

However, none of the authors of the reports were called as witness, while the high court was not correct in ignoring the fact, the bench said.

"The trial court treated the accused as if he is carrying a magic wand which is available to produce  highly qualified experts, who are government servants, on a phone call. There was no opportunity, in the real sense, to the appellant to cross-examine the experts," the bench said.

In the case, the incident has happened on April 20, 2018, charge sheet was filed in a record time of seven days on April 27, 2018, while the judgement by the trial court was delivered on May 12, 2018.