HC to take a call on death sentence imposed on caste Hindu couple for murdering Dalit woman

Source:- thehindu.com

The Madras High Court Bench here would decide now whether the murder of a young Dalit lactating mother by a Caste Hindu couple on May 13 last, just because their daughter had eloped with her brother, would fall under the category of ‘rarest of rare’ cases warranting death sentence.

A Division Bench of Justices A. Selvam and P. Kalaiyarasan on Friday took cognisance of the January 9 judgement referred by the Tirunelveli Principal District and Sessions Court for confirmation and ordered notices returnable by February 21 to the prosecution as well as the two convicts.

While awarding death sentence to P. Sankaranarayanan (48) and his wife S. Chellammal (42) for murdering S. Kalpana, mother of a one-year-old baby boy, at Palayamkottai in Tirunelveli district, the Sessions Court had held it to be a case of honour killing and therefore liable to be imposed with death penalty.

The Sessions Judge A. Abdul Kadhar pointed out that the convicts had murdered the victim when they had gone to her house in search of their daughter. Then, both of them had abused the victim with derogatory words referring to her caste and the first convict had used a machete to cut her at the instance of his wife.

Observing that test for determining the issue of ‘rarest of rare’ should not be judge-centric and that courts should be convinced whether the society would approve awarding of capital punishment for the offence committed by the convicts, the judge said that death penalty could be the only punishment for honour killings.

He relied upon the Supreme Court’s 2011 judgement in Bhagwan Dass’s case wherein a Bench of Justices Markandey Katju and Gyan Sudha Misra observed: “In our opinion, honour killings, for whatever reason, come within the category of rarest of rare cases deserving death punishment. It is time to stamp out these barbaric, feudal practices.”

The trial court also pointed out that the apex court in another judgement delivered in 1991 in Sevaka Perumal’s case had held that death sentence could be the most appropriate punishment if there were materials to conclude that the offence was a deliberately planned crime which was executed meticulously without any provocation at the spur of a moment.

Explaining the reasons for imposing death sentence on the woman convict too, Mr. Kadhar said that the law does not differentiate between men and women when it comes to imposition of punishment and in so far as the present case was concerned the convict woman had exhibited deep rooted communal hatred which had led to the murder of another woman.

After pronouncing his verdict and ordering that both the convicts shall be hanged to death, the trial judge referred his decision to the High Court for confirmation as required under Section 366 of the Code of Criminal Procedure which states that death penalties imposed by trial courts should not be executed until they were confirmed by the High Court.