SC upholds death sentence awarded to two youths for rape and murder
New Delhi, Feb. 16 (UNI) The Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence awarded to two sexually obsessed youths of Karnataka for raping and murdering an 18-year-old girl of their own village.
A bench comprising Justices Arijit Pasayat and Lokeshwar Singh Panta in their judgment dated Feb. 13 dismissed the appeals of Shivu and his associate (name not given in the judgment) and upheld the judgment of Karnataka high court and the trial court awarding capital punishmernt to the two holding that the case at hand fell in the rarest of rare category and death sentence awarded by the trial court and confirmed by the High Court was appropriate.
The two appellants had earlier tried unsuccessfully to rape two other girls of the village but no police case was filed against the two and they were let off by the village elders after telling them to mend their ways.
Emboldened by the leniency shown to them they raped Shivamma and later strangulated her to death on October 15,2001. She had gone to throw the manure in her family land.
Her dead body was discovered by her family members and her clothes were in total disarray.
The
apex
court
while
dismissing
the
appeals
of
the
two
noted,"Award
of
punishment
following
conviction
at
trial
in
a
system
wedded
to
rule
of
law
is
the
outcome
of
cool
deliberations
in
the
court
room
after
adequate
hearing
is
afforded
to
the
parties.
The
criminal
law
adheres
in
general
to
the
principle
of
proportionality
in
prescribing
liability
according
to
the
culpability
of
each
kind
of
criminal
conduct.
Anything
less
than
a
penalty
of
greatest
severity
for
any
serious
crime
is
thought
to
be
measure
of
toleration
that
is
unwarranted
and
unwise.
But
uniformly
disproportionate
punishment
has
some
very
undesirable
practical
consequences." UNI
AKS/SC
RP
RN1103