[Death Penalty] "Courts are not oracles of public opinion", Patna High Court while acquitting death row convict from a murder case

The Patna High Court on Wednesday acquitted a person on death row for murder charges. The man had been convicted by a lower court for murdering a woman and her two daughters on supposedly being goaded by a desire for property. (The State of Bihar v. Niranjan)

The Bench of Chief Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice S Kumar was hearing a reference to confirm the death sentence.

Recording a finding that the lower court had been swayed by the fact that the crime was committed against women, the Bench cautioned against adopting a paternalistic attitude towards women. The Court pointed out that the crime was committed not necessarily because the victims were women, especially since the prosecution alleged that the crime arose out of a property dispute.

Case Background

Two persons, Niranjan and Birendra, were accused of murdering a woman and her two daughters, pursuant to a common intention to kill the three. While Birendra was acquitted by the Trial Court for lack of evidence, Niranjan was sentenced to death and convicted for murder on the basis of circumstantial evidence. Accordingly, he was sentenced to death by hanging and required to pay a fine of Rs. 20,000, to suffer a one-month-long simple imprisonment if he defaulted on the fine.

The Trial Court's list of aggravating and mitigating factors

After listing the factors that aggravated and mitigated the offence, the Trial Court found the aggravating circumstances to outweigh the mitigating factors.

The young age of the accused, his lack of criminal antecedents, his background and socio-economic conditions were found to mitigate the offence, while the following factors were found to aggravate the offence:

1. The accused supposedly took advantage of the deceased woman’s loneliness and started living in her house after her husband died;

2. He tortured the woman for property while he stayed with the woman and her family,

3. He killed the woman and her family after he failed to get his hands on the property

4. The offence was gruesome, brazen, indicative of the convict’s coldness, cruelty, and incapability to reform.

The trial court is stated to have observed that such a brutal massacre instils a sense of insecurity and helplessness in community especially amongst women and the brutality and viciousness of the crime shocks the collective conscience of society.

Finding the crime to have been diabolic and bound to shock the conscience of society, the trial court relied on the Supreme Court’s dictum in Mukesh v. NCT (Nirbhaya case), to conclude that the youth of the accused was not a mitigating factor, considering the brutality of the crime.

Therefore, the Trial Court was sentenced Niranjan to death.

What the High Court said

The High Court made a series of crucial observations in the course of its judgment exonerating the appellant, ranging from remarks on the quality of evidence gathered and on the death penalty generally.

On the quality of evidence and on mitigating factors that had not been considered by the trial court

The High Court found that the Trial Court failed to duly apply its mind to mitigating circumstances. In the case at hand, the mitigating circumstance the Court failed to properly consider was the fact that the circumstantial evidence brought before the Court gave rise to residual doubt, which should have worked in the appellant’s favour.

The High Court noted,

The Bench also observed that there was nothing to demonstrate that the accused desired property. All that was available were the statements of interested witnesses. The Court termed the evidence collected by the prosecution circumstantial. The Judges went on to say that evidence gathered was crucial not just to arrive at a finding of guilt but for sentencing as well.

The Court drew on a catena of judicial decisions on the admissibility of circumstantial evidence to conclude that:

• There were no witnesses to the crime nor was there any scientific evidence that even remotely linked Niranjan to the crime.

• There was a delay of 12 hours in lodging the FIR and surprisingly, all the witnesses whose statements the Trial Court relied upon knew about the incident only after reading about it in the morning newspaper.

• The witness statements were contradictory.

On the Trial Court being influenced by the brutality of the crime and public perception of it

Noting that the lower court seemed to have been influenced by the heinousness of the crime and witness statements, the High Court said:

On the death penalty and the importance of the 'rarest of the rare' doctrine

The Court emphasized that the death penalty was an extreme punishment to be imposed only in the rarest of rare cases. Urging Judges not to be bloodthirsty, the Court underscored the duty cast upon judges to properly balance out aggravating and mitigating circumstances. As noted in the judgment:

Why have a simple imprisonment for a default upon a fine when the person is going to be hanged by the neck?

The Court also took issue with the fact that simple imprisonment had been imposed for the petitioner’s failure to pay the fine. This was a fallacy, the Judges recorded, since the person had already been sentenced to death.

With the above observations, among others, the Court directed that Niranjan be set free forthwith.

Advocates Sharda Nand Mishra, Deepak Kumar, and Rajiv Ranjan argued the appellant's case. Assistant Public Prosecutor Dilip Kumar Sinha represented the State.

Read the Judgment