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Vijay Kumar v. The State of Jammu and Kashmir

Criminal Appeal · 2018 INSC 1054Decided 14 Nov 2018
Criminal Appeal Nos. 1391-1393 of 2018
Justice N.V. Ramana · Justice Mohan M. Shantanagoudar · Justice M.R. Shah

Background

The appellant had been convicted of murdering three minor children at night and seriously injuring others, arising from a matrimonial dispute, and was sentenced to death by the trial court, a sentence the Jammu & Kashmir High Court confirmed. The Supreme Court had earlier restricted its own notice in the appeal to only the question of sentence, not the conviction itself.

Decision Breakdown

Since only the sentence was in question, the Court examined whether the case was truly a "rarest of rare" case justifying death, applying the tests from Bachan Singh and Machhi Singh. It found the accused had no prior criminal record and was not a professional killer, and while the crime was brutal, it did not meet the exceptionally aggravated threshold required for the death penalty. Relying on Swamy Shraddananda and Union of India v. V. Sriharan, the Court commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment for the remainder of the accused's natural life, specifically denying him any entitlement to remission (early release).

Lesson Learnt

Even a brutal multiple murder does not automatically warrant the death penalty: courts must weigh mitigating factors (such as no prior record) against aggravating ones, and the law allows a special category of "life without remission" as a middle path between death and ordinary life imprisonment.

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

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