A bench headed by Justice UU Lalit while doing so observed that the only difference between a saint and a sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
In the present matter, the Court noted that the case did not fall within ‘rarest of rare’ category.
The Court observed that in the recent case of Shatrughna Baban Meshram vs. State of Maharashtra, considering the fact that the accused had not consciously caused any injury with an intent to extinguish the life of the victim, the apex court had commuted the sentence of death penalty to the life imprisonment.
“The facts and circumstances of the case on hand are similar to the case of Shatrughna Baban Meshram with one distinction in that, Section 376A of IPC being applicable in the instant case Considering the above, we, while affirming the view taken by the courts below with regard to the conviction of the appellant for the offences charged against him, deem it proper to commute, and accordingly commute the sentence of death for the sentence of imprisonment for life, for the offence punishable under Section 302 IPC,” the Court ordered.
The separate sentence of life imprisonment imposed on the convict by the trial court for the offence of rape was reduced by the Supreme Court to rigorous imprisonment for 20 years.
Invoking Oscar Wilde, the bench also comprising Justices S Ravindra Bhatt and Bela Trivedi said,
“The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. One of the basic principles of restorative justice as developed by this Court over the years, also is to give an opportunity to the offender to repair the damage caused, and to become a socially useful individual, when he is released from the jail…….The maximum punishment prescribed may not always be the determinative factor for repairing the crippled psyche of the offender. Hence, while balancing the scales of retributive justice and restorative justice, we deem it appropriate to impose upon the appellant-accused, the sentence of imprisonment for a period of twenty years instead of imprisonment for the remainder of his natural life for the offence under section 376A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).”
Source: Barandbench
