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Gourab Mondal @ Shanu & Another v. State of West Bengal

Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 184Decided 18 Feb 2026
Crl.A. No.-000971-000971 - 2026
Justice B.V. Nagarathna · Justice Ujjal Bhuyan

Background

In December 2014, the appellants (then aged 22 and 19) kidnapped a child for ransom, raped and murdered her, and buried her body by the river Ganga. The trial court convicted them under multiple IPC sections and the POCSO Act and sentenced them to death. The Calcutta High Court commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment but added a harsh rider: life imprisonment without any possibility of remission for the rest of their natural lives. The appellants challenged only this sentencing aspect before the Supreme Court, arguing the "no remission, ever" condition amounted to a double punishment on top of already losing the chance of a fixed-term sentence.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court agreed that imposing life imprisonment with no possibility of remission for the appellants' entire natural lives, on top of denying them a fixed term, imposed an unduly harsh double hardship, especially since the appellants were young (early twenties) at the time of the offence and had already served over eleven years in custody. Relying on its precedents in Union of India v. V. Sriharan alias Murugan and Sukhdev Yadav v. State of NCT of Delhi on modified/fixed-term sentencing as an alternative to death or whole-life imprisonment, the Court modified the sentence to a fixed term of twenty years' imprisonment without remission, preserving eventual finality and some prospect of reintegration rather than imprisonment until death.

Lesson Learnt

Even in cases involving extremely brutal crimes where death sentences are commuted, courts must balance the gravity of the offence against a convict's age, years already served, and the constitutional value of eventual reform: a sentence that removes both a fixed end-date and any possibility of remission can be seen as excessive and may be converted into a defined term of years.

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

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