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Pappu vs. The State of Uttar Pradesh

Criminal Appeal · 2022 INSC 164Decided 9 Feb 2022
Criminal Appeal Nos. 1097-1098 of 2018
A.M. Khanwilkar · Dinesh Maheshwari · C.T. Ravikumar

Background

The appellant was convicted of enticing a seven-year-old girl with the promise of lychee fruits, raping her, murdering her, and dumping her body near a riverbank after dragging it over a distance. The Trial Court convicted him and, the very next day, sentenced him to death, a decision the Allahabad High Court confirmed, calling it a "rarest of rare" case. The appellant challenged both his conviction (arguing the circumstantial evidence (last-seen, recovery of the body, forensic evidence) was unreliable and that he was falsely implicated over a land dispute) and his death sentence before the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court upheld the conviction, finding the concurrent findings of the Trial Court and High Court on guilt were properly based on the evidence and called for no interference. On sentencing, however, the Court found that neither the Trial Court (which sentenced the very next day after conviction) nor the High Court had properly considered mitigating circumstances before treating the case as "rarest of rare". They had relied merely on the brutality of the crime itself, which is not enough under the Bachan Singh framework requiring balanced weighing of aggravating and mitigating factors. Noting the appellant had no criminal antecedents, came from a poor background, had a family dependent on him, and had unblemished jail conduct, all pointing to a probability of reform, the Court commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment, but with a special condition that he serve a minimum of 30 years of actual imprisonment without eligibility for premature release or remission.

Lesson Learnt

A death sentence cannot be imposed based solely on the brutality of the crime. Courts must consciously weigh mitigating factors (age, background, absence of prior record, likelihood of reform) against aggravating ones before concluding a case is "rarest of rare." Even where death is not warranted, courts can still impose life imprisonment with a fixed, extended minimum term without remission for especially heinous crimes.

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

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