Thaindian News

New Delhi, May 7 (IANS) The Delhi High Court Friday commuted the death penalty of a man, convicted of raping and killing a minor girl, to life imprisonment.
The decision was taken by a division bench of Justice Pradeep Nandrajog and Justice Suresh Kait, who ordered that the convict Ranjeet would not be eligible for any parole nor be entitled to be considered for remission of sentence before a period of 20 years in jail.

Ranjeet, a native of Bihar, abducted the girl from his neighbourhood in Gopalpur near Timarpur in north Delhi July 3, 2007, raped her and then killed her. He was convicted and sentenced to death in the case.

“No doubt, every rape is detestable and as against many other penal offences, manifests depravity. No doubt rape of a minor girl invites greater repulsion; no doubt, rape followed by murder aggravates the meanness and the depravity of the act. But the moot question would be whether it should invite the extreme penalty required to be inflicted in the rarest of the rare case,” the court said.

“The power of the state to put to death its citizen who has committed a penal offence has to be tempered with the mercy power of the state to give an opportunity to a deviant citizen to reform himself,” it said, adding the death penalty should be kept for crimes “so abhorrent that the collective conscious of the society seeks retribution”.

“Personal predilections of a judge have no place in a sentencing policy,” the bench added while asking the judges to be vigilant while awarding death penalty.