The judiciary’s forgiving nature in commutation of death sentences has led to an increase in crime in the country and somewhere this practice of sparing mercy to heinous offenders has to end, the Supreme Court remarked on Thursday, as it reserved its order in a remission plea.
The judge recalled an incident where a father had raped and murdered his elder daughter and was handed death penalty. The conviction was based on the mother’s sole testimony. The Supreme Court commuted death to life sentence. The family had gathered to celebrate Sonia’s birthday, when the couple bludgeoned them to death over a property dispute between Sonia and her half-brother Sunil.
The incident took place on August 23, 2001, when Sonia (then 19) and her husband Sanjeev Kumar murdered her father and former MLA Relu Ram Punia (50), her mother (41), her two siblings (sister 16 and brother 23), sister-in-law (20) and her brother’s three children (aged 4, 2 and 45-day-old) while they were asleep, according to the case details.
A bench of justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu was hearing a petition filed by a life term-serving couple seeking premature release in the 2001 gruesome murder of eight members of a former Haryana legislator’s family in Hisar district.
We just forgive, forgive, forgive, one must draw a line somewhere,” justice Datta remarked. Also Read I Kangana Ranaut moves Delhi High Court seeking removal of AI-generated, obscene content online, summons issued Because of the Supreme Court’s forgiving nature India is facing this problem, “It is.
“After some years, the father comes out on parole and murders the mother in front of his younger daughter. On the younger daughter’s testimony, he is given death sentence. “That is why we say, our forgiving nature has to come to an end somewhere. The oral remarks came as the bench was hearing a remission plea filed by a couple serving commuted life term in a mass murder case.
And then death sentence is commuted to life sentence by the Supreme Court on the ground that he did not murder the younger child,” justice Datta said.
