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The Punjab and Haryana High Court has commuted the death sentence of a Ludhiana woman convicted of kidnapping her neighbours' two-year-old granddaughter and burying her alive in a pit. It substituted rigorous imprisonment for 30 years without remission, while upholding her conviction.

A Division Bench of Justice Vinod S. Bhardwaj and Justice Ravinder Malik held that although the offence was gruesome, the case did not warrant capital punishment as the only possible sentence. It said the accused could not be held "beyond reform" or a threat to society at large.

"We also ponder whether capital punishment is beginning of a sentence or end of it. A sentence which affords time for introspection and repent each day for the crime committed is a sentence served... While a mother has lost her daughter, let the children of the accused not lose their mother to a point of no return. A society is not built upon denying to the children, what their mother stole but by ushering in some hope."

The FIR  was registered on the statement of the child's grandfather. The child was about two years and nine months old and was playing in the street outside her home when she went missing at around 2:15 PM. Her father is a Punjab Police employee.

The complainant alleged that their neighbour, Neelam, had abducted her. He attributed the motive to the family having stopped the child's mother from talking to Neelam. In her disclosure statement, Neelam gave a different reason. She said she harboured a grudge because the child's father brought things for his children, and her own children would then make demands she could not afford.

Around 2:50 PM, a security guard at a plot near Eldeco City on the G.T. Road saw a woman on a black Activa scooter take a small child into an adjacent walled vacant plot and come out alone about ten minutes later. He stopped a passing PCR patrol. The police found the child's shoes and fresh sand over a pit, and dug out the child, whose mouth, nostrils and ears were filled with sand. She was taken to DMC Hospital and declared dead at 5:41 PM. Neelam was arrested the same night.

The Sessions Court convicted her under Sections 364, 302 and 201 IPC by judgment dated 12.04.2024. By order dated 18.04.2024, it sentenced her to death under Section 302, life imprisonment under Section 364, and seven years' rigorous imprisonment under Section 201. It referred the death sentence to the High Court for confirmation, and Neelam filed an appeal.

For the accused, it was argued that the case rested on circumstantial evidence and that the chain was incomplete. Counsel pointed out that the body had been recovered and the child declared dead before the FIR was registered at 7:15 PM. The hospital record carried the child's name and her grandfather's phone number before she had been identified, and the Investigating Officer was named in it. Counsel argued this showed tampering with timings and records.

Counsel also argued the shoes were deliberately left at the spot so that a later "recovery" could link the accused and the security guard was a planted witness and could not have seen clearly from about 100 feet

A woman without a digging tool could not have dug a pit and buried a child within ten minutes.

It was further submitted that the Section 65-B certificates for the CCTV footage and call records were defective, since the original DVR was not seized and the Safe City footage came from a data centre not in the certifying officer's charge.

The extra-judicial confession to a family acquaintance was unnatural and the complainant and the police had attributed two different motives.

The State and the complainant relied on the CCTV footage, which showed the accused taking the child away on her scooter and later returning alone. They also relied on the call records, the witnesses who last saw the child with her, and Section 106 of the Evidence Act, since the accused had given no explanation of how she parted company with the child.

Timing and records

After hearing the submissions, the Bench held that the recovery of an unidentified child's body and the complaint about a missing child were two independent events, and linking them took time. It accepted the doctors' explanation that the child's name and her grandfather's phone number were added to the hospital record later.

It held that the police were right to prioritise tracing the accused and carrying out the recovery that followed her disclosure. It said the sequence of events showed a fair investigation, not a suspicious one.

Last seen

The Bench found a chain of witnesses, not one isolated sighting a neighbour's CCTV camera recorded the accused taking the child away at around 2:15 to 2:17 PM and a shopkeeper who knew both of them saw them together near the Jalandhar bypass at around 2:30 PM.

The security guard saw her enter the plot with the child at 2:50 PM and leave alone and The body was recovered from the same plot shortly afterwards. Relying on Satpal v. State of Haryana, State of Rajasthan v. Kashi Ram and Nagendra Sah v. State of Bihar, the Bench held that the narrow time gap left "no room for any intervening hypothesis". The burden therefore shifted to the accused under Section 106, and her failure to offer any explanation in her Section 313 statement was "an indispensable additional link in the chain of guilt."

The Bench found the security guard to be a natural witness with "no axe to grind". Finding no obstruction shown in the site plan, it held that he could see from about 30 metres. It said his stopping the PCR patrol was the act of a prudent person.

CCTV and call records

The Bench held that a Section 65-B certificate need not follow any prescribed form and must be read as an ordinary person would understand it. It rejected the objection that the neighbour's certificate had been written out by the police. It held that the neighbour's statement that the footage was "completely correct" covered both the DVR and the pen drive.

On the Safe City footage, it held that the officer in charge of the Safe City Project was a person "occupying a responsible official position" under Arjun Panditrao Khotkar. Under Section 65-B(3), the cameras and the data centre together constituted a single computer.

It also noted that no objection to the mode of proof had been raised at trial, and relied on Sonu v. State of Haryana, M.R. Hiremath and Rahil v. State to hold that such an objection cannot be raised for the first time in appeal.

Digging the pit

The Bench rejected the argument that the accused could not have dug a pit in ten minutes. It noted that the prosecution's case was that the pit already existed in the plot and that the child, who was under three, could offer no resistance.

It further held that the PCR personnel's first priority was to rush the child to hospital, not to collect evidence, which was the investigating agency's job. Leaving the shoes at the spot was therefore not suspicious.

Motive

The Bench held that the complainant had only expressed his own suspicion about why the accused might bear a grudge. The accused's real reason could differ from it, and that difference did not dislodge the prosecution case.

The Bench upheld the conviction and dismissed the appeal.

Counsel for the accused relied on the medical report, which found no psychopathology or dangerous personality traits, and on her satisfactory conduct and cordial relations in prison. He also relied on a sociological report showing that she came from a socially disadvantaged family living in extreme penury.

The complainant's counsel argued that burying a helpless child alive showed depravity, but did not dispute the reports.

The Bench reviewed the precedents, including Ediga Anamma, Bachan Singh, Machhi Singh, Santosh Kumar Bariyar and Shankar Kisanrao Khade. It relied in particular on Sundar v. State (2024), where the Supreme Court commuted a death sentence for the kidnapping and murder of a seven-year-old child.

There the Supreme Court held that the "rarest of rare" test requires that there be no possibility of reformation, not merely a grave crime. Sundar also recognised, following Swamy Shraddananda, that life imprisonment with remission may be inadequate in some cases.

The Bench held that the accused could not be regarded as beyond reform or a threat to society. It noted that she has children of her own, has shown no disorderly behaviour, and has maintained cordial relations with fellow inmates.

It commuted the death sentence to rigorous imprisonment for 30 years without remission, with a fine of ₹50,000, or one year's rigorous imprisonment in default. The sentences under Sections 364 and 201 IPC were maintained, and all sentences are to run concurrently.

Case Title: State of Punjab v. Neelam (murder reference); Neelam v. State of Punjab (appeal)

Bench: Justice Vinod S. Bhardwaj and Justice Ravinder Malik (judgment authored by Justice Bhardwaj)

Counsel: A.D.S. Sukhija, Senior Advocate, as amicus curiae, with Mehak Sawhney, Manjot Kaur and Vivek Chauhan; Amandeep Singh Rai and Sunaina Rani for the appellant-accused; Mohit Kapoor, Senior DAG, Punjab; Atul Goyal for the complainant

Click here to read order

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