Raju Jagdish Paswan v. The State of Maharashtra
Background
A nine-year-old girl went missing after school in 2010; she was found dead in a well, having been raped and then drowned. The accused, who worked at the same factory as the victim's father, was identified through witness accounts and ultimately convicted of murder, rape, and destruction of evidence. Both the Trial Court and the High Court sentenced him to death, finding the crime to be of exceptional brutality warranting no leniency. The Supreme Court's notice in the appeal was limited only to the question of whether the death sentence itself was appropriate.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court agreed the crime was heinous and involved "exceptional depravity," but held that the death penalty should be reserved for the "rarest of rare" cases where life imprisonment is unquestionably an inadequate alternative. It found mitigating factors - the accused's young age (22), the absence of evidence that the crime was premeditated, and the lack of proof that he posed a continuing danger to society or could not be reformed - meant this case did not meet that threshold. The Court set aside the death sentence but held that an ordinary life sentence (which in practice can mean release after 14 years) would be disproportionately lenient for such a brutal crime, so it directed that the accused serve a fixed term of 30 years' imprisonment without any remission (early release).
Lesson Learnt
The death penalty in India can only be imposed in the rarest of rare cases, and courts have the power to impose a long, fixed prison term (without the usual possibility of early release) as a proportionate middle path between execution and ordinary life imprisonment.