The Supreme Court Friday commuted to life imprisonment the death sentence awarded to two men for murdering an eight-year-old son of a dentist couple in Nagpur in 2014 after kidnapping him for ransom.
Making it clear that "life means till the end of the life", the apex court directed that there shall not be any remission till the convicts completes 25-year of imprisonment.
A three-judge bench headed by Justice U U Lalit delivered the verdict on the appeals filed by convicts Rajesh Daware and Arvind Singh who had challenged the May 2016 judgement of Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court which had confirmed the death sentence awarded to them by a trial court.
"The motive of the accused to take life was to become rich by not doing hard work but by demanding ransom after kidnapping a young, innocent boy of 8 years. Thus, having considered all the circumstances and facts on record, we are of the considered view that the present case falls short of the 'rarest of rare' cases where a death sentence alone deserves to be awarded to the appellants," the bench, also comprising Justices Indu Malhotra and Hemant Gupta, said.
The top court, which modified the sentence awarded to these convicts, upheld the verdicts of high court and trial court which had held them guilty of various offences under Indian Penal Code (IPC), including murder and kidnapping for ransom.
"However, the death sentence imposed by the trial court, confirmed by the high court, is converted into the life imprisonment," it said.
The father of the minor boy had lodged a complaint with Nagpur police in September 2014 about his son being missing.
In the complaint, he had said that watchman of his housing society had informed that the child had gone with a young boy, later identified as Singh, who had worn the clothes like that of the uniform of the employees of his clinic.
Both the father and mother of the victim are dentists and have their own clinic in Nagpur. During the investigation, both the accused were arrested and the body was recovered from under a bridge.
The victim's father had said that he had received a ransom call of Rs 10 crore for his son. As per medical reports, the cause of death was found to be smothering and several injuries were found on the body.
The police had referred to the statements of witnesses, CCTV footage of petrol pump where the boy was seen along with the accused on their two-wheeler and also last seen evidence to substantiate the case of prosecution.
According to the prosecution, Daware was earlier an employee at the clinic of the dentist couple and he was scolded by the boy's father on account of over-charging some patients coming there.
During the arguments, the counsel appearing for the accused had claimed false implication and raised several questions on the veracity of statements given by the witnesses.
In its verdict, the apex court said that "a party intending to bring evidence to impeach or contradict the testimony of a witness must give an opportunity to explain or answer when the witness is in the witness box".
"The desire to get rich by whatever means was a driving force with A-1 (Daware) to kidnap a young child of 8 years, who was a school going innocent child, who happened to be a son of well-to-do dentist couple," the bench said, while dismissing the appeals against the conviction.
During the arguments before the top court, the counsel representing the convicts said they were young, have no criminal antecedents thus, the death sentence imposed upon them was not warranted.
"We do not find any merit in the argument that being young or having no criminal antecedents are mitigating circumstances. What is required to be examined is whether there is a possibility of rehabilitation and whether it is the rarest of the rare case where the collective conscience of the community is so shocked that it will expect the holders of judicial power to inflict death penalty irrespective of their personal opinion as regards desirability or otherwise of retaining death penalty," the bench noted.
"This court has increasingly become cognizant of 'residual doubt' in many recent cases which effectively create an higher standard of proof over and above the 'beyond reasonable doubt' standard used at the stage of conviction, as a safeguard against routine capital sentencing, keeping in mind the irreversibility of death," the bench observed.
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