Allow Cookies!
By using our website, you agree to the use of cookies
It is remarkable that the top court has the grace to admit that it is prone to errors, but it is quite disheartening that, in the same breath, it confirms such irreversible sentences, as it did in the case of Khushwinder Singh, without even applying the mandatory test.
Date and Time: At About 10.30 AM, 5th March 2019, Tuesday. Place: Court No.2, Supreme Court of India.
After a few cases, item 1505 Khushwinder Singh vs. State of Punjab. Convicted. Death Sentence Confirmed, said, Justice MR Shah.
This confirmation of his death sentence would shock many because it came immediately after the bench acquitted 'death convicts' in two other cases.
The judgment which confirms an irreversible sentence like the death penalty does not contain a word about the possibility of reformation of the accused.
A proper psychological/psychiatric evaluation is to be done by courts to assess probability and possibility of reform of the criminal before awarding death sentence which was held by Justice Kurian Joseph in November 2018.
The judgment delivered on Tuesday confirming death sentence to Khushwinder Singh does not even state that the convict could not be reformed. Only two out of 27 pages of the judgment, is dedicated to examining the issue of the appropriateness of death sentence awarded. In the first paragraph which deals with the issue of sentencing, the court took note of the following factual aspects.
Any mitigating circumstance which warrants commutation of death sentence to the life imprisonment was not pointed by the counsel of the accused. Then it describes the gravity of the crime committed by the accused.
Interestingly, the bench has relied on Nirbhaya Rape Case judgment to confirm the death sentence. In the said judgment, there is an elaborate discussion about the probability of reforming the convicts, though it concludes that there was no scope of reform.
This judgment does not even mention the socio-economic circumstances of the accused and does not return a finding that rehabilitation is impossible. The Supreme Court has commuted about a dozen of death sentences in the last six months. Those judgments which commute the death penalty are more reasoned than the judgment delivered on Tuesday, confirming the death sentence. Ordering an irreversible sentence needs to be much more reasoned than an order commuting it. The death sentence is an exception, not a rule. The exception needs to be reasoned, not the rule. What is frightening in the judgment is the sheer lack of reasoning to award a noose.
86540
103860
630
114
59824