Calcutta HC Commutes Death Penalty For Double Murder

The Calcutta High Court has recently commuted the death penalty of a man convicted for the murder of a 1½-year-old child and the child’s mother.

The judgment passed by the Bench of Justices Debangsu Basak and Md Shabbar Rashidi stated that the trial judge failed to embark on an exercise to find out whether the convict was beyond reformation or not.

The court recorded that “In the facts of the present case, the state has neither at the stage of the trial nor before us in appeal provided any materials to show that the convict was beyond reformation and rehabilitation.”

Reliance was also placed on a decision of the High Court in the case of State of West Bengal v. Nemai Sasmal wherein the death penalty was commuted to life imprisonment in the case of a 14-year-old girl’s murder.

Therefore, the Court in that case observed that the extreme penalty of death ought not to be awarded unless the alternate option of life imprisonment is unquestionably foreclosed.

Furthermore, the two convicts were found guilty of double murder, with one of them being sentenced to life imprisonment and the other being awarded the death penalty. They preferred appeals, arguing that the prosecution failed to establish the chain of circumstances and relied on circumstantial evidence.

The Court took into account the State’s failure to provide material that the convict is beyond rehabilitation and reformation, noting that this was a mitigating circumstance in favor of the convict.

“Consequently, in our view, the award of life imprisonment as a sentence for the crime committed by convict No. 2 was not foreclosed.”

Thus, it found that the interest of justice would be served by commuting the death penalty of the convict to a life sentence without remission for a period of 40 years from the date of the commission of the offense.

All other aspects of the trial court’s judgment were upheld.