SC commutes death penalty of man in rape and murder of child

The Supreme Court on Wednesday commuted the death sentence awarded to a man for raping and killing a seven-year-old girl to life imprisonment, with a condition that he would not be released before serving 30 years in jail.

A bench of justices A M Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and C T Ravikumar took into consideration the facts that appellant Pappu did not have criminal antecedents and was not a hardened criminal. The court also noted the appellant was about 33-34 years of age at the time of the crime in 2015.

"The strong mitigating factor of probability of reformation and rehabilitation, particularly with reference to the antecedents and background of the appellant coupled with his satisfactory jail conduct, make out a case for communing death sentence into that of imprisonment for life," the bench said.

Also Read — Sexual assault against children crime against humanity: SC

The court also pointed out the appellant was having a family of wife, children and aged father, which would also indicate towards the probability of his reformation. Therefore, it would be unsafe to treat this case as falling in "rarest of rare" category, warranting the death penalty, the court added.

The top court upheld the conviction of the appellant for luring the seven-year-old to have lychee fruits. Thereafter, not only did he rape the girl, but he also murdered the girl and dumped the body in a garbage dump after having dragged it for over a kilometre.

However, the court said the orders by the Kushinagar trial court and the Allahabad High Court on death sentence were based on assumptive conclusions because of the ghastly crime and its abhorrent nature.

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