Very difficult for courts to impose death penalty since parameters to qualify case as 'rarest of rare' are very high: Madhya Pradesh High Court

The parameters for cruelty for awarding death penalty are set very high by the Supreme Court that it is close to impossible for courts to award capital punishment to a convict even if his actions are extremely diabolical, the Madhya Pradesh High Court recently observed [Ankit Vijayvargiya vs State of Madhya Pradesh].."This court is of the considered view that with the parameters of cruelty set so high nowadays for an offence to fall under the ambit of rarest of rare, as has also been recorded by the Supreme Court in the case of Mohammad Firoz vs State of Madhya Pradesh, it is, if not impossible, but is very difficult for any person to get the death penalty no matter how diabolic his actions are," the judgment passed on June 15 stated.A division bench of Justices Subodh Abhyankar and Satyendra Kumar Singh further said that even if a convict is awarded death sentence, the same is not acted upon within a reasonable time, thereby, losing its deterrent value."It is also seen that even when the death penalty of an accused is affirmed by the Apex Court,, it would still not be acted upon, leading to further suffering by the victims of the heinous crimes. The kith and kin of such victims who are also the victims, spend their lifetime in the hope that they would get some solace, some justice but all their hopes are crushed under the procedural system. This court is of the view that 'capital punishment' which is not awarded or executed within a reasonable time, loses its importance as a deterrence, as people have a very short memory and such offences usually get into oblivion, waiting for the next one to happen," the judgment said. .Therefore, the bench deemed it fit to direct the government to reconsider the provision of death sentence "as a mode of punishment as deterrence so that at least the victims of such crimes would get on with their lives, accepting their fate and would be saved from nurturing a false hope for decades altogether.".The observations were made while commuting the death sentence of a 30-year-old, convicted of rape and murder of a minor girl. .The appellant one Ankit Vijayvargiya, a resident of Mhow in Madhya Pradesh, was convicted and handed down death sentence by a sessions judge on February 24, 2020. The man was convicted for offences under Sections 363 (kidnapping), (366A) inducing a minor for sex, 376AB (raping the minor), 302 (murder), and 201 (destroying evidence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and for the offences of penetrative sexual assault and aggravated penetrative sexual assault under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO Act).As per the prosecution case, on December 2, 2019, the appellant had picked up the minor victim, who was sleeping on a footpath along with her parents. He took her to an abandoned bungalow and raped her and since she was crying a lot, he strangulated her to death..The bench in its judgment noted how the appellant had strangulated the minor girl breaking her neck, damaging her wind pipe and other internal organs. It also noted that the material on record was sufficient to convict the appellant and thus upheld his conviction.However, the bench noted that the sessions court while granting him death sentence, did not consider the mitigating circumstances in his favor."Considering the totality of the evidence brought on record, viz., the death sentence was awarded to the appellant on the same day on which he was found guilty, depriving him of his valuable right to bring to the notice of the court any mitigating circumstances in his favour, the injuries suffered by the victim, and the fact that the appellant who himself is a father of a minor daughter, is aged 30 years with no criminal record, chances of his rehabilitation cannot be ruled out. We find it fit to impose a sentence of twenty years instead of death penalty on the appellant," the bench held.The Court, therefore, commuted his death sentence to imprisonment for 20 years. .Advocate S K Meena appeared for the appellant while the State was represented by Government advocate Amit Singh Sisodiya..[Read Judgment]