Mohd. Naushad vs. State (Govt. of NCT of Delhi)
Background
On 21 May 1996, a bomb blast at the crowded Lajpat Nagar market in Delhi killed 13 people and injured 38, as part of what the prosecution alleged was a larger conspiracy involving 17 accused persons to destabilise the country; several accused died, were never traced, or were declared proclaimed offenders, leaving only nine to stand trial. In 2010, the Trial Court convicted several accused, sentencing three of them (Mohd. Naushad, Mirza Nissar Hussain @ Naza, and Mohd. Ali Bhatt @ Killey) to death and one (Javed Ahmed Khan) to life imprisonment. In 2012, the Delhi High Court commuted Naushad's death sentence to life imprisonment and acquitted Naza and Killey altogether, while confirming Javed Ahmed Khan's life sentence. Both the surviving convicts and the State cross-appealed to the Supreme Court.
Decision Breakdown
After an extensive review of circumstantial evidence, including recoveries of bomb-making materials, "pointing out" memos to shops where components were purchased, the theft of the car used in the blast, and the judicial confession of co-accused Javed Ahmed Khan. The Supreme Court found the prosecution had proved beyond doubt that Naushad, Naza, Killey, and Javed Ahmed Khan were all part of a common criminal conspiracy that planned and carried out the bombing. It dismissed the appeals of Naushad and Javed Ahmed Khan against their convictions, and allowed the State's appeal to restore the convictions of Naza and Killey, who had been wrongly acquitted by the High Court. However, on sentencing, the Court declined to restore or impose the death penalty, citing the case being based on circumstantial evidence, the roughly 27 years that had elapsed since the offence, and the settled principle (from Swamy Shraddhanand and the Constitution Bench in Union of India v. V. Sriharan) favouring life imprisonment over death in such circumstances as mitigating factors even though the crime fell within the "rarest of rare" category. All four were instead sentenced to life imprisonment without remission for the rest of their natural lives. The Court also criticised the decades-long delay in the trial and noted with concern that only a handful of the seventeen originally accused persons were ever actually tried.
Lesson Learnt
Even in extreme "rarest of rare" cases involving mass casualties, courts weigh mitigating factors, such as reliance on circumstantial evidence and extraordinary delay, before imposing a death sentence; and an acquittal by a lower court is not final where the Supreme Court finds the chain of circumstantial evidence conclusively establishes guilt.