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Synopsis

The Supreme Court has recently commuted death penalty of a man in a case related to back-to-back indiscriminate firings due to village political rivalry which resulted into death of six persons in October 2003, to life term with a condition not to release him without 20 years imprisonment.

A bench of Justices B R Gavai, B V Nagarathna and Prashant Kumar Mishra dismissed an appeal filed by one Sudesh Pal against his conviction and life term and partly allowed Madan's appeal by converting the capital punishment into imprisonment with a fixed term of 20 years, including the period undergone, without remission.

The court found that the role attributed to both the appellants was identical, so the Allahabad High Court was not justified in imposing the death penalty in case of one accused and converting the punishment in another to life term.

The only distinction that the high court found was that Madan had been awarded life imprisonment in another case.

"We find that the present case is not a case wherein it can be held that imposition of death penalty is the only alternative," the bench said, adding if the high court's judgment was maintained, it would lead to an anomalous situation.

After going through the evidences, the bench held that the act of the appellants and the other accused would certainly be the one which shocked the collective conscience of the society and fell in the category of rarest of rare cases.

"It could thus be clear that, six deaths were caused on account of brutal firing by the appellants and other accused persons. The entire village and the people residing in the surrounding areas must have been shocked by such heinous and gruesome act. Not only that, one of the eye witnesses was also murdered during the pendency of the trial. The terror of the appellants and other accused persons was of such a high magnitude that even the witnesses who had received grievous injuries did not support the prosecution case and were required to be declared hostile," the court noted.

In the case, the court called for Madan’s psychological assessment report which claimed that he was maintaining his daily activities adequately and his socio-occupational functioning was unaffected except occasional forgetfulness which could be age related.

The Prison Conduct Report submitted by the Superintendent, District Jail, Baghpat, also stated appellant Madan is currently 64 years old. He has been in prison for 18 years and 3 months. During this entire duration, he has no history of any kind of prison offence. The Report further showed that he has not been involved in any form of quarrels or fights in prison and has cordial relations with other prisoners in his barrack and follows the prison rules.

Dealing with the appellant's contention, the bench said that merely because some of the witnesses were interested or inimical witnesses, their evidence could not be totally discarded. The only requirement was that their evidence had to be scrutinized with greater care and circumspection. 

"In the present case, both the High Court and the trial court have meticulously scrutinised the evidence and found the testimony of the eye witnesses trustworthy and reliable. We have ourselves scrutinised their evidence. We find that merely because there are certain inconsistencies in the evidence of the witnesses, their evidence cannot be discarded," the bench said.

The appellants also claimed that the motive attributed by the prosecution of political enmity due to elections, held two and half years prior to the date of incident, was very weak. 

The court, however, pointed out that the motive was specifically brought on record in the evidence of Lokendra (PW-1) and Irshad Khan (PW-7). Harpal Singh (PW-10) was also deposed about the enmity between the families of Ishwar and Ram Kishan. 

"In any case, the present case is a case of direct evidence. It is a settled law that though motive could be an important aspect in a case based on circumstantial evidence, in the case of direct evidence, the motive would not be that relevant," the bench said.

With regard to contention that there have been certain lacunae in the police investigation, the bench said that the "evidence of eye witnesses is consistent, reliable, trustworthy and cogent. Merely because there are certain lacunae in the investigation, it cannot be a ground to disbelieve the testimony of eye-witnesses".

The court thus held that the prosecution has proved beyond reasonable doubt the case for conviction under Section 302 of IPC and rejected the appeals.

Case Title: Madan Vs State of Uttar Pradesh