SC sets aside death sentence; orders man to remain in jail till end of natural life for killing his children

New Delhi: The Supreme Court has spared the life of a former manager of a nationalised bank for murdering his two children on June 16, 2010 but directed him to remain in prison till the end of his natural life.

The appellant, Ramesh N Naika, then working as a Manager at the Solapur Branch of the Punjab National Bank, was allegedly angry with his wife, also a bank employee, and her family due to his sister-in-law's love affair with her colleague from another caste. He was separately tried and convicted of killing his sister-in-law and mother-in-law, just before drowning his children in a tank in Mangalore. After killing his four relatives, he called his wife, asking her to also end her life.

Considering his appeal, a bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sanjay Karol and Sandeep Mehta upheld the conviction but interfered with the sentence by ordering that he should be kept in prison for the remainder of natural life without remission for murder of Master Bhuvanraj, and Miss Krithika, aged 10 years and three and half years respectively.

"When the sentence of death is imposed, it should only be imposed if the same is possible, even after an objective consideration of all the factors in favour of the person accused of having committed the offence, which was not done properly," the bench said in its recent judgment.

The court partly allowed the appeal against the judgment of the Karnataka High Court of September 22, 2017. The High Court affirmed Additional District and Sessions Judge, Dakshin Kannada's  judgments of 2013, holding him guilty and sentencing to the capital punishment.

"We should not even for a moment be taken to understand that the barbarity of the crime, the helplessness of the two children who met the most unfortunate of ends, and that too at the hands of the very person who bore half the responsibility of bringing them into the world, has escaped us, or we, in any way have condoned such a hideous act, done by the appellant-convict," Justice Karol wrote in the judgment on behalf of the bench.

The bench noted the trial court did not consider the mitigating factors like the convict had no criminal antecedents; and he had good relations with the deceased persons.

"We direct that the hangman’s noose be taken off the appellant-convict’s neck, and instead that he remains in prison till the end of his days given by God Almighty," the bench said.

The court found Ms Savitha (sister-in-law) and Ms Saraswathi (mother-in-law) too, were killed for no fault of theirs either (for which the accused already stands tried and convicted separately).

"He shall now await his natural end, without remission, in the confines of a penitentiary," the court said.

The court said whom a person falls in love with, is not within the human sphere of control.

The appellant-convict got his sister-in-law a job, out of love and affection for the family members of his wife which, of course, is by extension, his family, and so, "for him to expect that his word be taken as the gospel truth which everyone is bound to follow, is unquestionably a case of unjustified high-handedness. It is sad that such a restrictive  world-view on part of the appellant-convict became the reason for these senseless acts of violence and depravity," the bench said.