In Brief
A 35-year-old man was convicted by the trial court and high court of raping and murdering a 7-year-old girl in a village in Uttar Pradesh in 2015, and sentenced to death. The Supreme Court upheld the conviction on the basis of circumstantial evidence: the child was last seen with him, he led police to the body, and forensic evidence supported rape. However, the Court commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment with 30 years mandatory minimum, finding the trial and high courts failed to consider mitigating factors—the appellant's lack of criminal history, poverty, family dependence, and potential for reform. The Court reiterated that life imprisonment is the norm; death is imposed only in "rarest of rare" cases with proper weighing of all circumstances.
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