Supreme Court Summarises Factors To Decide Term Of Sentence Convicts Must Undergo Before Remission In Murder Cases

“(a) the number of deceased who are victims of that crime and their age and gender; (b) the nature of injuries including sexual assault if any; (c) the motive for which the offence was committed; (d) whether the offence was committed when the convict was on bail in another case; (e) the premeditated nature of the offence; (f) the relationship between the offender and the victim; (g) the abuse of trust if any; (h) the criminal antecedents; and whether the convict, if released, would be a menace to the society.”

Further, the Court also listed the positive factors like the accused's age, possibility of reformation, and remorseful conduct.

“Some of the positive factors have been, (1) age of the convict; (2) the probability of reformation of convict; (3) the convict not being a professional killer; (4) the socioeconomic condition of the accused; (5) the composition of the family of the accused and (6) conduct expressing remorse.”

Imperatively, the Court penned down these relevant factors after surveying 27 cases, including the recent decision Ravinder Singh vs State Govt. of NCT of Delhi, (2024) 2 SCC 323.

The genesis of this case lies in the gruesome murder of a family of four persons, including a child and an aged lady. As per the prosecution, the accused had an illicit love affair with the deceased's wife, Latha (who was also stabbed to death). Later, the accused also attempted to commit suicide.

The Trial Court passed a death sentence against the accused. However, when the matter went to the High Court for confirmation, it modified the sentence to the imprisonment of thirty years without remission. Pertinently, the High Court relied upon Swamy Shraddananda v. State of Karnataka, (2008) 13 SCC 767 decision wherein it was held that the Courts could avoid the death sentence by giving a graver form of imprisonment.

Aggrieved by this, the accused approached the Apex Court, pleading for a lesser sentence.

The Court observed that there is no straitjacket formulae for deciding the period of sentence. The Court, however, also noted that this discretion should be exercised on reasonable grounds.

“How much is too much and how much is too little? This is the difficult area we have tried to address here. As rightly observed, there can be no straitjacket formulae. Pegging the point up to which remission powers cannot be invoked is an exercise that has to be carefully undertaken and the discretion should be exercised on reasonable grounds. The spectrum is very large.”

Pursuant to this, the Court surveyed previously decided cases that have applied the ratio of Swamy Shraddananda's decision. By penning down 27 cases along with the sentence given by the Court and the circumstances taken into account, the Court made the observations as mentioned earlier.

Applying the factors above to the present case, the Court started weighing by observing that the murder was preplanned. Further, the victims were unarmed and were brutally murdered.

“It is also to be noted that by the act of the accused, three generations of single family have lost their lives for no fault of theirs; Nature of injuries inflicted on Latha, Ramachandran and Chitra highlights the brutality and coldbloodedness of the act.,” the Court added.

At the same time, the Court also noted that the accused was 28 years old, and he did not try to flee from the scene of the crime and tried to commit suicide. Furthermore, the Court noted that the accused was in custody for around 18 years and was sentenced on the basis of circumstantial evidence. Even the report from the jail authority unambiguously indicated that the accused's behavior had been satisfactory.

In view of this, the three-judge Bench modified his sentence from 30 years to 25 years' imprisonment, including the sentence already undergone.

Case Title: NAVAS @ MULANAVAS vs. STATE OF KERALA., Diary No.- 17607 – 2010

Citation : 2024 LiveLaw (SC) 248

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