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Synopsis

The Supreme Court recently commuted the death penalty of a bank manager who killed his own two children in June 2010 to teach his wife a lesson for not supporting him in preventing his sister-in-law from having a love affair with someone he disapproved of.

He had also been separately tried and convicted for the murders of his sister-in-law and mother-in-law.

In the appeal filed by Ramesh N Naika, a bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sanjay Karol, and Sandeep Mehta upheld his conviction for the murders of Master Bhuvanraj and Miss Krithika, aged 10 years and three and half years, respectively.

However, the bench commuted the sentence of capital punishment into imprisonment for the remainder of convict's natural life, for the convict had no criminal antecedents, and he had good relations with the deceased persons.

"We direct that the hangman’s noose be taken off the appellant-convict’s neck, and instead that he remains in prison till the end of his days given by God Almighty," the bench said.

It emphasised that when the sentence of death is imposed, it should only be imposed if the same is possible.

Court found that an objective consideration of all the factors in favour of the person accused of having committed the offence was not done properly in the present case.

However, the bench clarified, "We should not even for a moment be taken to understand that the barbarity of the crime, the helplessness of the two children who met the most unfortunate of ends, and that too at the hands of the very person who bore half the responsibility of bringing them into the world, has escaped us, or we, in any way have condoned such a hideous act, done by the appellant-convict."

Court noted Ms Savitha (sister-in-law) and Ms Saraswathi (mother-in-law), too, were killed for no fault of their.

"He (the convict) shall now await his natural end, without remission, in the confines of a penitentiary," the court directed.

The appeal was filed challenging the Karnataka High Court's September 22, 2017 judgment, which confirmed the conviction and sentence of death awarded to the appellant/convict by Additional District and Sessions Judge, Dakshin Kannada in 2013.

The appellant/convict was working as a Manager at the Solapur Branch of the Punjab National Bank. He was married to Smt Sundari, herself an employee of the State Bank of Mysore, Mangalore Branch. They had two children – 10-year-old Bhuvanraj and 3½- year-old Krithika.

It was alleged that the appellant/convict was dissatisfied with the behaviour and life choices of his sister-in-law, Ms Savitha, whom he had gotten a job at the Provident Fund office. The woman fell in love with her co-worker P Mohan and wanted to pursue matrimonial life with him. The appellant-accused first tried to dissuade the sister-in-law, but after finding that the wife and mother-in-law did not support him, he tried to teach the family a lesson.

In furtherance of this design, he allegedly killed Ms Savitha and Ms Saraswathi at Tumkur Village by dumping their bodies in the sump tank of his house there on June 16, 2010, and then came to Mangalore the next day. Here, on the pretext of showing the children around the city, he took them in the cab of Firoze to the gardens situated on the property of Sathyanarayana Prasad, where he drowned them in the tank.

Having done so, he sent a message to his wife, informing her that the said persons were no longer alive, and she too should follow suit by ending her life in a well. Concerned by this, she informed her relatives, who advised her to approach the authorities. The FIR was registered, setting the criminal law in motion.

The court here dealt with appeals related to the murder of two children only.

Having heard the counsel for the parties, and perused the record, the bench held that there was no any error in the findings recorded by both the courts below qua the guilt of the convict appellant and the judgment on conviction.

In the case, the bench noted the absence of criminal intent as a mitigating circumstance was, however, negated by the high court observing that during trial, he had tried to meddle with the witnesses and influence them - this showed the presence of criminal intent, leading to the registration of case in 2012, under Section 506 IPC, pending on the file of 3rd Additional Civil Judge and JMFC, Tumkur and another under Section 195A and Section 507 IPC in 2013 before the court that dealt with the trial for Section 302 IPC.

"We find this argument difficult to accept. The word antecedent, as is obvious, means 'a preceding event, condition or cause'. Therefore, to use something that did not exist at a prior point in time, to deny him the benefit of the consideration of lack of criminal antecedents as a mitigating circumstance, was not justified," the bench said.

The court pointed out antecedents are of two types : one is pretrial and the other is during or post-trial. The appellant convict has no antecedents, however, during trial he attempted to intimidate witnesses.

Turning to the motive, the bench said, "Whom a person falls in love with, is not within the human sphere of control". The sister-in-law fell in love with her colleague, who incidentally was of a different caste. When told to break off her relationship with him for that reason, she couldn’t. Her sister, Smt Sundari and her mother, the latter, both supported their near and dear ones in pursuing their desires.

"We see nothing wrong with that. The appellant-convict, getting his sister-in-law a job is out of love and affection for the family members of his wife, which, of course, is by extension, his family, and so, for him to expect that his word be taken as the gospel truth which everyone is bound to follow, is unquestionably a case of unjustified high-handedness. It is sad that such a restrictive world-view on part of the appellant-convict became the reason for these senseless acts of violence and depravity," the bench said.

Had he heeded the advice of his wife, he could have gone on to live a perfectly happy life, the bench said.

"After all, it is not without reason that the well-known proverb goes - 'live and let live' which is said to mean that people should accept the way other people live and behave, particularly, if their way of doing things is different than one’s own. But be that as it may, when the sentence of death is imposed, it should only be imposed if the same is possible, even after an objective consideration of all the factors in favour of the person accused of having committed the offence, which was not done properly," the bench said, partly allowing the appeal.

Case Title: Ramesh A Naika Vs The Registrar General, High Court of Karnataka Etc