Young age of complainants in rape-murder cases is not considered to be “the only or sufficient factor” for imposing death sentences on con...
Young age of complainants in rape-murder cases is not considered to be “the only or sufficient factor” for imposing death sentences on convicts, the Supreme Court has said, reported Live Law on Tuesday.
The court made the observation while commuting the death sentence of a man convicted for raping and murdering a five-year-old girl in Karnataka in 2010, PTI reported.
In an order on Monday, the Supreme Court reduced the sentencing to a life term and said that the accused will spend at least 30 years in jail.
The man, Irappa Sidappa Murgannavar, had been sentenced to death by a trial court in 2012, The Times of India reported. In 2017, the Karnataka High Court had upheld this order. After that, the man approached the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court bench, while hearing the man’s case on Monday, relied on its verdict in another ruling where it had commuted the death penalty of an accused person to a life term. The case involved a man who was convicted for raping and murdering a child in Maharashtra in 2013.
Ahead of the verdict in the case in Maharashtra, the court had surveyed 67 of its judgments over a period of 40 years, according to Bar and Bench.
The court said that in at least 51 of those 67 rape-and-murder...
