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Balesh Kumar Kuraiti v. State of Chhattisgarh

Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 850Decided 12 Aug 2026
Criminal Appeal arising out of SLP (Criminal) No. 7030 of 2026
Justice Aravind Kumar · Justice Vipul M. Pancholi

Background

The appellant was accused of committing aggravated penetrative sexual assault on a three-year-old girl in February 2016. The victim's father heard a child crying, and on returning home learned that the appellant, a guest at a relative's house, had been seen carrying the child away and that she returned crying with injuries and bleeding, and had been raped. The Trial Court convicted the appellant under Section 376(2)(i) of the IPC and Section 6 of the POCSO Act (as it stood before its 2019 amendment) and sentenced him to imprisonment for life. The High Court of Chhattisgarh confirmed the conviction but reduced the sentence to 20 years' rigorous imprisonment, reasoning by reference to the 2019 Amendment Act (which had raised the minimum punishment for this offence from 10 years to 20 years). The Supreme Court's notice on the appellant's further appeal was limited strictly to the question of sentence: the conviction itself was not reopened.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held the High Court's approach was legally untenable. Since the offence was committed in 2016, before the 2019 Amendment Act came into force, applying the amended, harsher minimum-sentence provision (which also added the concept of imprisonment for the "remainder of natural life") to a 2016 offence would violate Article 20(1) of the Constitution, which bars retrospective, heavier punishment than what was prescribed by the law in force at the time of the offence. The Court also found the High Court's own reasoning internally inconsistent. It acknowledged the victim was only three years old, yet still reduced a life sentence to a fixed 20-year term. Holding that the Trial Court had correctly imposed the maximum punishment available under the law as it stood in 2016, the Supreme Court set aside the High Court's judgment and restored the Trial Court's sentence of imprisonment for life (without the "till natural life" restriction that only applies under the amended law), with both sentences to run concurrently.

Lesson Learnt

Courts cannot apply a later law that increases punishment to an offence committed before that law existed: the punishment applicable is always the one in force on the date of the offence, a protection guaranteed by Article 20(1) of the Constitution.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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