The Punjab and Haryana High Court has commuted the death sentences of four men convicted of murdering a doctor's wife during a robbery at their home in Kurukshetra in January 2023.

In place of the death sentence, the Court imposed imprisonment for a minimum of 30 years without remission. It held that the case did not fall within the “rarest of rare” category and that the possibility of the convicts' reformation could not be ruled out.

A Division Bench of Justice Vinod S. Bhardwaj and Justice Ravinder Malik also acquitted Poonam, a former domestic help of the family, who had also been sentenced to death. The Court gave her the benefit of doubt, holding that she could not be convicted merely because she was acquainted with one of the main accused.

With her acquittal, fewer than five persons stood convicted. The Court therefore converted the dacoity convictions into convictions for robbery.

On sentence, the Bench observed,

“We also ponder whether the true measure of a sentence lies in how swiftly it ends a life or in how long it compels a person to live with what he has done. A sentence that gives every morning for decades to reflect and repent is no mean sentence. While a family has lost one of its own, the law need not extinguish the lives of the convicts to vindicate that loss; it must instead ensure that they spend the prime of their lives in confinement, answerable for the crime, with the door of reform left ajar, but not of release.”

The complainant, Dr. Atul Arora, runs a hospital on the ground floor of his building in Thanesar, Kurukshetra, and lives on the upper floor with his parents and his wife, Vanita Arora.

On the night of January 9, 2023, he heard his wife shriek and stepped out of his parents' room. Two young men pointed a gun at his head, beat him and demanded cash and jewellery. They also appeared to know that the jewellery was kept in the temple room.

According to the complainant, the assailants then discussed killing him. He bolted himself inside his parents' room, jumped from the balcony into the courtyard of an adjoining school and raised the alarm at a neighbour's house. When he returned with the police, he found his wife lying dead. Jewellery, including jewellery kept for his daughter's wedding, was missing, along with the DVR of the upper-floor CCTV cameras.

Four accused were arrested the next day after an exchange of fire with the police, which led to a separate FIR. Jewellery was recovered on their disclosure statements. The complainant identified all four at a Test Identification Parade.

In December 2025, the Additional Sessions Judge (Fast Track Special Court), Kurukshetra, convicted five accused under Sections 120-B, 302, 396, 395/397, 460 and 201 IPC and the Arms Act, and sentenced all five to death: Sunil Kumar, Manish Kumar, Vikramjeet @ Bitt, Vikram @ Vicky and Poonam.

Two other accused were acquitted, One was the family's domestic help, Ket Ram, who was alleged to have signalled the assailants from the rooftop. The other was Umesh Kumar, who was alleged to have supplied the weapon.

The High Court heard together the death reference, the convicts' appeals, and the complainant's appeal against Ket Ram's acquittal.

The Court upheld the identification of the four assailants on the following grounds:

Test Identification Parade

The TIP was held before the CJM on January 11, 2023, the day after the arrests. The Court said a TIP conducted before a Judicial Magistrate under Section 54-A CrPC carries a “higher degree of sanctity”. Breaching non-mandatory procedural instructions, such as not preparing a list of the decoys, did not vitiate it, since the identity of the accused had been kept concealed.

Identification in court

The Court said the TIP is only corroborative, and the primary evidence is the complainant's identification of the accused in court.

CCTV certificate

The defence objected to the Section 65B certificate given by the complainant's son-in-law. Relying on Sonu @ Amar v. State of Haryana, the Court held that objections to the mode of proof must be raised when a document is exhibited, not for the first time in appeal.

Control of the CCTV

The Court also said that in a household, control of CCTV cameras is often shared. The son-in-law had the password and regularly monitored the cameras, so he was in control of them for the purposes of Section 65B.

Poonam Acquitted and Dacoity Reduced to Robbery

The Court found that the case against Poonam rested on the ground that she had earlier worked as a maid in the house, she knew where the valuables were kept, she was acquainted with Vikram @ Vicky and she had made a disclosure statement in police custody.

The phone number she was alleged to have used belonged to a prosecution witness, who turned hostile. The Court noted that no recovery was made from her or on her disclosure. It added that even if she had shared information about where the jewellery was kept, that information “may have been shared in good faith or in a normal conversation.”

The Court held that she was entitled to the benefit of doubt and could not be incarcerated “solely on the ground of strong suspicion on account of being acquainted with one of the main accused.”

The Court also upheld the acquittal of Ket Ram and dismissed the complainant's appeal. It noted that Ket Ram and his wife had themselves been held hostage at gunpoint, and that the prosecution's own case at trial was that the assailants gained entry on the pretext of buying a cake. It held: “a suspicion, how so ever strong, would not be substituted for proof.”

Since only four persons remained convicted, the Court held that the offence of dacoity, which requires five or more persons, was not made out. It also made the following findings:

The firearm had been recovered in the separate FIR, in which the accused were acquitted, so the recovery could not be relied on in this case either. The convictions under Sections 397 and 398 IPC and the Arms Act were therefore set aside. The accused entered through the common passage without concealment, so the case was not one of lurking house-trespass under Section 460 IPC. The offence made out was house-trespass after preparation for hurt, under Section 452 IPC.

 The conviction under Section 302 read with Section 120-B IPC was upheld. The medical evidence showed that the deceased's head had been forcefully struck against a wall. The Court held that it was immaterial which of the four had caused the fatal injury, since all had entered the house in pursuance of the conspiracy, armed and prepared to use force.

The Court relied on Bachan Singh, Machhi Singh and Santosh Bariyar, as well as the Supreme Court's 2026 decisions in Shahjad Ali v. State of Uttarakhand and Moyuddin Shaikh v. State of Gujarat. 

Not Rarest Of The Rare

The Court held that, "Having heard learned counsel for the parties and having weighed the mitigating and aggravating circumstances qua each of the accused, we are of the opinion that the present case, though the offence is grave and has shaken the conscience of society, does not warrant capital punishment as the only punishment to be imposed."

It noted that, the accused are between 26 and 31 years of age, hail from financially modest backgrounds, "have limited education, and none is suffering from any active psychiatric illness. The record also reflects that accused Sunil Kumar has maintained cordial relations with the jail authorities and has shown no tendency toward violence. It cannot, therefore, be said with certainty that the accused are beyond reform or incapable of returning to the fold of society."

At the same time, this Court cannot be oblivious to the adverse circumstances: a woman was done to death within the sanctity of her home, in pursuance of a conspiracy hatched with deliberation, and some of the accused carry a long history of involvement in other criminal cases, it added

The convictions of the four were modified to the offences below. All sentences will run concurrently.

Ms. Neha Rani, Advocate, Ms. Vidyotma Malik, Advocate, Mr. Mansi, Advocate, Mr. Rajender Kumar, Advocate

Mr. Sanklap Dhanda, Advocate, Mr. Sidharth Sehgal, Advocate, Mr. Jayditya, Advocate, Mr. Rishabh Chaudhary, Advocate,

Mr. Vishal Sehgal, Advocate and Mr. Balraj Sharma, Advocate for the appellant/convicts in CRA-D-109-2026.

Mr. Gaurav Datta, Advocate, for the appellant in CRA-D-75-2026.

Mr. Randeep S. Dhull, Advocate, Mr. Sanjeev Majra, Advocate and Mr. Navdeep Singh, Advocate, for the appellant in CRA-D-40-2026.

Mr. P.S. Ahluwalia, Sr. Advocate (Amicus Curiae) with Dr. (Ms.) Isha Mehta, Advocate, Ms. Kadambari Bhan, Advocate, Ms. Natasha, Advocate Mr. Harkirat Randhawa, Advocate and Mr. Bhavi Kapur, Advocate.

Mr. Siddharth Sharma, Advocate  Ms. Ameesha Goyal, Advocate, anMs. Sanjana Garg, Advocate, for the appellant in CRA-AD-132-2026 and for the complainant in MRC-1-2026, CRA-D-40-2026, CRA-D-75-2026 and CRA-D-109-2026.