Justice Dipankar Datta of the Supreme Court on Thursday orally observed that the court’s “forgiving nature” in commuting death sentences was contributing to an increase in crime and said such leniency had to “come to an end somewhere”.
A two-judge bench of Justice Datta and Justice Sheel Nagu was hearing a plea seeking the premature release of a life convict whose death sentence in a murder case had been commuted to life imprisonment.
Referring to the “rarest of rare” doctrine, Justice Datta said times had changed.
“It is because of our forgiving nature, that India is facing these problems. Forgive, forgive, forgive, you have to draw a line somewhere,” he said.
Justice Datta recalled a case in which the Supreme Court commuted the death sentence of a man who had raped and murdered his elder daughter and later murdered his wife while on parole.
“The father goes to jail on life imprisonment on the basis of the mother’s testimony. After some years, the father comes out on parole and murders the mother in front of his younger daughter. On the younger daughter’s testimony, he is given the death sentence. And then the death sentence is commuted to life sentence by the Supreme Court on the ground that he did not murder the younger child. That is why we say, our forgiving nature has to come to an end somewhere,” he added.
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