If there is hope for reformation & rehabilitation, then option of life imprisonment is not foreclosed, says SC while commuting death sentence to life imprisonment, for rape & murder of minor

Read Judgment: Irappa Siddappa Murgannavar vs. State of Karnataka

Pankaj Bajpai

New Delhi, November 11, 2021: While commuting the death sentence and making it clear that the appellant shall not be entitled to premature release until he has undergone actual imprisonment for at least thirty years, the Supreme Court has opined that incarceration for life will serve as sufficient punishment and penitence, in case of commission of an abhorrent crime of rape & murder. 

A Larger Bench of Justice L. Nageswara Rao, Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice B.R. Gavai observed that when there is hope for reformation and rehabilitation, then the option of imprisonment for life is certainly not foreclosed. 

The case of the prosecution was that Irappa Siddappa Murgannavar (Appellant) subjected the deceased ‘R’ (five year old girl) to rape, killed her by strangulation, and then disposed of her body, tied in a gunny bag, into the stream named Bennihalla. 

As there were no eye witnesses to the commission of the offences, in order to prove these postulations, the prosecution had relied on three-fold circumstances, namely: (i) that the appellant took away R from a neighbour’s house on December 28,2010; (ii) that the appellant was last seen by certain witnesses carrying R and a gunny bag towards the Bennihalla stream; and (iii) that based on the disclosure statement of the appellant on January 1, 2011, the dead body of R was recovered in a gunny bag from Bennihalla.

The appellant was held guilty of offences of rape and murder by the Sessions Court by imposing death penalty on him. On appeal, the Karnataka High Court confirmed the order of the Sessions Court. 

After considering the evidence, the Top Court upheld the conviction, however, at the same time, noted that the High Court acted in contravention of Section 235(2) of CrPC by failing to provide a separate hearing to the accused on sentencing. 

Taking note of the mitigating factors that included the young age of the accused, lack of his criminal antecedents, and socio-economic background, the Top Court observed the appellant has been on death row for about ten years and his conduct in jail was stated as ‘satisfactory’ by the jail authorities.

Accordingly, the Larger Bench opined that life imprisonment would be sufficient punishment for the accused.

The Larger Bench went on to say that it was rightly pointed out by the counsel for the appellant that the Trial Court merely noticed that the appellant was of young age belonging to a very poor family, but did not consider these as mitigating factors, which was also overlooked by the High Court as well. 

“There is no doubt that the appellant has committed an abhorrent crime, and for this we believe that incarceration for life will serve as sufficient punishment and penitence for his actions, in the absence of any material to believe that if allowed to live he poses a grave and serious threat to the society, and the imprisonment for life in our opinion would also ward off any such threat”, said the Bench.