Supreme Court cites depravity and the barbaric manner of crime to confirm death penalty of a rapist-murderer

In a judgment that is likely to be debated for quite some time, the Supreme Court has awarded death penalty to one Vasanta Sampat Dupare accused of raping and murdering a four-year old child after luring her with chocolates..A Bench of Justices Dipak Misra, Rohinton Nariman and UU Lalit dismissed the review petition filed by Dupare and confirmed the death penalty even as it noted that Courts must take care not to disregard the “balance-sheet” theory of aggravating and mitigating circumstances as laid out in the Macchi Singh case..The Trial Court, High Court and the Supreme Court all affirmed the guilt of the accused, and sentenced him to death owing to the sheer grievousness of the crime. The accused, however, decided to knock the doors of the Apex Court one last time by filing a review petition..While the Bench rejected the submission that the case did not fall in the rarest of rare category outright, it did agree to hear the aggravating and mitigating circumstances..Even as Senior Advocate Anup Bhambani, advocate for the petitioner, contended that the petitioner was doing his best to equip himself with an education, and that there was a possibility of his reform and rehabilitation, it seems that the submissions were not enough to sway the Bench..The Bench discussed at length the aggravating circumstances weighed against the mitigating circumstances, but eventually decided that the former were too many to ignore..The Apex Court proceeded to dismiss Dupare’s review petition, noting in its judgment that,.“We have given anxious consideration to the material on record but find that the aggravating circumstances namely the extreme depravity and the barbaric manner in which the crime was committed and the fact that the victim was a helpless girl of four years clearly outweigh the mitigating circumstances now brought on record.”.Read the judgment below.