This judgment could guide the sentencing pattern for gruesome crimes across the country, especially the Mumbai blasts.
It only harms the justice system, judges said
NEW DELHI: This judgment could guide the sentencing pattern for gruesome crimes across the country, especially the Mumbai blasts. The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that 'undue sympathy' to the guilty by imposing inadequate sentences would be harmful to the justice system and public confidence as a whole.
"It is, therefore, the duty of every court to award proper sentence having regard to the nature of the offence and the manner in which it was executed or committed," said a Bench of Justices Arijit Pasayat and L S Panta in a Karnataka case, relating to the brutal chopping of an arm and a leg of a man who was returning home with his child 16 years ago.
This could be judged as an expeditious dispensation by the apex court as criminals had appealed against eight years of jail term and a meagre Rs 500 each early this year. The judges enhanced the fine to Rs 2,000 that would be given to Kumara. But they reduced the jail term to five years.
In an attempt to strike a balance between the gravity of crime and quantum of punishment that's been dissatisfactory in cases, the judges said that the "law regulates social interests, arbitrates conflicting claims and demands"'.
By deft modulation, sentencing process should be stern where it should be, and tempered with mercy where it warrants to be. The facts and circumstances in each case, the nature of the crime, the manner in which it was committed, the motive for commission of the crime, the conduct of the accused, and all other attending circumstances are relevant facts which would enter into the area of consideration.
The judges said that "the discretionary judgment in the facts of each case is the only way in which such judgment may be equitably distinguished". While upholding the death sentence to a Kolkata security guard Dhananjoy Chatterjee who had raped and murdered a school-going girl, the apex court had observed "shockingly large number of criminals go unpunished, thereby criminals get encouraged and justice suffers".
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