SC commutes rapist father’s sentence

In the thick of a debate over the necessity of death sentence to a rapist and the criteria for determining the ‘rarest of rare’ category, the Supreme Court on Monday commuted the capital sentence awarded to a father who, while on parole in a case of raping his minor daughter in the presence of his wife, had axed them to death.

A bench of justices P Sathasivam and Fakkir Mohammed Ibrahim Kalifulla in separate but concurring judgments did not find the accused-father Mohinder Singh as a threat to the society.
Awarding the life sentence to Singh, the top court applied the principle laid by it in its judgment relating to Gopal Vinayak Godse, the brother of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse.

Convicted with transportation of life for being a conspirator in Gandhi’s assasination, Gopal claimed remission of 2,893 days and said he had actually served the imprisonment, thus be released from jail immediately.

But the Bombay high court and the apex court rejected his plea and held, “A sentence of transportation for life must prima facie be treated as transportation or imprisonment for the whole of the remaining period of the convicted person’s natural life,” the bench had said.

The same principle has been applied by the Justice JS Verma committee advocating for life time jail term to a second-time rapist.