-Report by Avinash Pandey

The Supreme Court recently upheld the death penalty awarded to a 37-year-old man for the rape and murder of a 7and a half-year-old girl who was mentally and physically challenged, in the case of Manoj Pratap vs State of Rajasthan. The crime had occurred in 2013 in the state of Rajasthan when the convict Manoj Pratap was around 27 years old. The 3-judge bench comprising Justice AM Khanwilkar, Justice Dinesh Maheshwari, and Justice CT Ravi Kumar had made an observation that the crime that was in contention was of extreme depravity while looking at the vulnerable state of the victim and the manner in which the crime had been committed.

The victim had been kidnapped by the accused party in this case on a stolen motorcycle by misleading her after offering the little girl sweets and other attractive eatables. Thereafter the accused had taken the victim to a silent area where he committed the crime and at the same time, her head was smashed which resulted in multiple injuries including bone fractures and dislocations. The doctors had reported gruesome injuries on the private parts of the victim as well.

The convict urged in front of the court that he was only 28 years old at the time he had committed the crime and furthermore he has a family and a minor daughter. However, the Supreme Court asserted that these are not mitigating factors and there is no foreseeable probability that there can be any rehabilitation or reformation in the behavior of the convict.

The Supreme Court while upholding the death sentence for the convict stated that the convict was a danger to the maintenance of peace and order in the society. The court said that the conduct that the convict has shown in the past and after going through the facts of the current case it is not possible for the court to reduce the penalty or the punishment from a death sentence to life imprisonment.

For generations, people have argued about the cultural and ethical shame associated with capital execution. Nonetheless, the court has repeatedly given verdicts in favor of the retention of the death penalty in the nation.

Article 21 of the Indian constitution, while recognizing the right to life as an indisputable and basic value, contains several restrictions. The 35th Law Commission Report of 1967 outlined how repealing the death sentence legislation in India just wouldn’t improve society as a whole. Maintaining the safety of people at the forefront of its debate, the study concluded that in order to maintain harmony and security in a society with huge educational or ethical distinctions, a mechanism for the death sentence was necessary for some situations.

The punishment allotted to the convict, in any case, is based on the facts and not on the severity of the crime which was concluded by the Supreme Court in this judgment. In some situations where there is no scope for any reform, the death penalty can be given as has been held in this case.