In Brief
The appellant was convicted of murdering three people and gravely injuring others on a single day. The trial court and High Court upheld the conviction and imposed death sentence as a 'rarest of rare' case. The Supreme Court commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. While affirming conviction, the Court found the High Court erred in not properly weighing mitigating factors: the appellant had no prior criminal record (the rape charge being false), showed good conduct in jail for four years, and the State failed to prove he could not be reformed. The Court emphasised that death penalty requires the 'rarest of rare' test with unquestionably foreclosed alternatives, rigorous examination of both crime and criminal, and highest constitutional standards. Life imprisonment (the rule) rather than death (the exception) was appropriate."
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