Sanap has been held guilty of raping and murdering 23-year-old Esther Anuhya, a Tata Consultancy Services employee, in 2014.
"Esther was put to death by the accused for no fault of her own, except for the reason that she is a woman. She fell prey to the sinister designs of accused to fulfil his lust. This attitude deserves a death sentence," said the Bombay High Court while confirming the capital punishment handed to 33-year-old Chandrabhan Sanap on Thursday.
Sanap has been held guilty of raping and murdering 23-year-old Esther Anuhya, a Tata Consultancy Services employee, in 2014.
Her body was found along the Eastern Express Highway in an unidentifiable condition. Her father had identified her through the ring and the clothes she was wearing.
On the pretext of dropping Esther to her hostel in Andheri, the accused accompanied her after she had alighted from a train at Lokmanya Tilak Terminus in Kurla.
A division bench of justices Ranjit More and Bharati Dangre held that the prosecution had proved the case against the accused beyond reasonable doubt.
Based on circumstantial evidence and CCTV footage, the court said, "The case of appellant deserves to be in the category of 'rarest of rare' and it also amounts to devastation of social trust. It shocks the social conscience and calls for an extreme penalty."
Rejecting a plea for leniency by Sanap, the court said, "Merely because his behaviour as an undertrial prisoner is good, that cannot be grounds to absolve him of the most gruesome and cruel act which he indulged into. Such a person would surely remain a menace to society."
The court said it felt Sanap should be "hanged by neck till he is dead" because the "judiciary cannot be a mute spectator in the entire scenario when neither a young girl of two years nor a woman of 70 years feels safe in this country."
The bench junked the 'convict reformative theory', saying, "Undue stress on it would defeat basic tenets of imposition of penalty in cases where the crime shocks the collective conscience of the society. Public abhorrence of the crime needs a reflection through court's verdict. We cannot be unmindful of the expectation of the family of victim."
WHAT COURT SAID
- We cannot shut our eyes to the cases reported about young girls and women being rape and victimised
- Women in the country, after a long journey, are at least on the path of empowerment and it is the bounden duty of the state to empower them by assuring their safety and security
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 "Esther Anuhya and Chandrabhan Sanap")
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