In Brief
The appellant was convicted of rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl and sentenced to death. The Supreme Court upheld the conviction based on circumstantial evidence (last-seen theory, eyewitness identification, and forensic evidence) but modified the sentence. It held that the case does not fall within the 'rarest of rare' category warranting capital punishment because no special reasons as required by law were recorded, and mitigating circumstances were not properly considered. The death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment with actual imprisonment of 25 years without remission.
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