Supreme Court dismisses death penalty review for Bangalore’s “Jack the Ripper”

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of India upheld the death penalty awarded to Umesh Reddy, dubbed as Bangalore’s ‘Jack the Ripper’ by some media outlets. The judgment was delivered by a Bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi, Prafulla C Pant and AM Khanwilkar.

If media reports are to be believed, Umesh was a habitual offender with a particular modus operandi. After the commission of rape, he would murder the victim and make the scene of crime appear like a robbery.  However, these stories remain conjecture at best, and figments of overactive media imagination at the worst.

As the Supreme Court’s judgment shows, Reddy was convicted for only seven crimes, out of which it was the rape and murder of Jayashree Subbiah that resulted in the death sentence. Subbiah’s 7-year-old son had met Umesh while Umesh was leaving the scene of the crime, and had later testified against Umesh.

As far as leaving the child unharmed was concerned, which was one of the main pillars the defence counsel Kiran Suri had relied on to prove the possibility of Umesh’s reformation, the Bench noted that,

“As far as the fact as to leaving PW-2 Suresh (seven years old child) unharmed is concerned, it is apparent that actually the child was left unharmed not because of any compassion on the part of the petitioner. Rather he was on a hasty retreat from the place of incident.”

It seems as if Umesh’s criminal antecedents happened to be the final nail in his coffin. The judgment, penned by Prafulla C Pant, reasoned that there was little possibility of reformation. The judgment reads,

“The following chart of history of seven convictions recorded against the petitioner is placed before us which shows that there is little hope of rehabilitation and reformation of the petitioner.

….

The worst is that the petitioner has committed crimes not only before the incident, Page 21 Page 21 of 22 but also within two days, subsequent to the incident, i.e. another robbery in connection with which he was apprehended by the public and handed over to the police.

Taken together, all the above, reveals that the petitioner is a menace and has become threat to the society.”

Interestingly, Justice Ranjan Gogoi had pursued a slightly different line of questioning during the hearing, choosing to look at the case from an academic perspective.

He had also requested Anitha Shenoy, appearing for the Registrar General of the State of Karnataka, to collate a list of all the cases in which death penalty has been awarded so as to provide a perspective into this particular case.

Read the judgment below.