In Brief
A 23-year-old man from rural Chhattisgarh was convicted of kidnapping, rape, and murdering a 3-year-old girl, based on circumstantial evidence including his disclosure of the victim's location during a religious ritual, subsequent police recovery of the body and evidence linking him to the crime. Both the trial court and High Court sentenced him to death. The Supreme Court upheld the conviction but commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment, holding that while the crime was heinous, the accused's young age, rural background, lack of prior convictions, satisfactory prison conduct, and absence of State evidence foreclosing reformation were compelling mitigating factors. The Court emphasized that death penalty requires consideration of the criminal, not just the crime.
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