Calcutta High Court: In a dreadful incident involving murder of a 13 year old step-son by his father and for having carnal intercourse with him against the order of nature and causing disappearance of evidence of unnatural offence, a division bench of Ashim K. Roy and Ishan Chandra Das JJ commuted the death sentence of the accused awarded by the trial court to an imprisonment of 25 years.
In the instant case, the trial court awarded death sentence to the accused (appellant) for his conviction under Section 302 IPC and sentenced him to undergo rigorous imprisonment for 10 years and 5 years concurrently for his conviction under Section 377 and 201 IPC, on the observation that in the present case (a) the victim was helpless child on whom the accused being his stepfather was in a dominating position, (b) the accused to fulfil his lust by making carnal intercourse on him for several days and taking advantage of his position in a very cold and pre-planned way took him away and for concealing the evidence of unnatural offence killed him brutally by strangulation with ligature (c) after committing the murder, he returned home in the evening and behaved normally with the unfortunate mother of the helpless boy (d) the conduct of the accused proves that he is a man without natural instinct and cannot be rectified and reformed and free movement of the accused in the society at large will be dangerous. If this kind of crime is treated leniently, wrong signal will go to the society that no proper justice is available in our society.
The Court observed that the case rests entirely on circumstantial evidence, and the chain of evidence and examination of witnesses clearly established the guilt of the accused beyond reasonable doubt. The Court also observed that the victim died a homicidal death and autopsy report clearly reveals that the deceased was subjected to regular carnal intercourse. The Court noted that though the crime committed by the appellant was grave, serious and heinous and that he had a dirty and perverted mind and no control over his carnal desire, however it cannot be held that he is such a dangerous person to spare his life would endanger the community and would constitute a continuing threat to the society. Accordingly, the Court while upholding the order of conviction, rejected the death reference and commuted it to an imprisonment of 25 years relying of a very recent case of Sangeet and another v. State of Haryana (2013) 2 SCC 452. State of West Bengal v. Sanjay @ Batul Halder,2015 SCC OnLine Cal 700, decided on 30.03.2015