PETITIONER: NETI SREERAMULU Vs. RESPONDENT: STATE OF ANDHRA PRADESH DATE OF JUDGMENT02/04/1973 BENCH: DUA, I.D. BENCH: DUA, I.D. MATHEW, KUTTYIL KURIEN CITATION: 1973 AIR 2551 1973 SCR (3) 844 1974 SCC (3) 314 CITATOR INFO : R 1974 SC 799 (15) E&D 1989 SC1335 (62) ACT: Indian Panel Code, s. 302-Accused convicted for murder- Whether sentence to be reduced from death to life imprisonment. HEADNOTE: Appellant, aged 20, was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering his wife on October 30, 1971 and the High Court confirmed the death sentence on January 24, 1972. The appeal to this Court was limited only to the question of sentence. In the High Court it was argued that the sentence should be reduced to life imprisonment because, the appellant was a young man of 20 years of age, the incident arose out of sexual jealousy and the crime was not pre-meditated. The High Court did not consider these circumstances to be sufficient to merit a lesser sentence. In this Court it was contended that appellant acted under grave provocation and secondly, the Courts below had ignored the effect of the recent amendment of s. 357 Cr.P.C. Allowing the appeal, HELD : (1) While confirming the capital sentence, the High Court has an obligation to itself to consider why sentence should be imposed and should not be content with the trial court's decision on the point. It is the duty of the High Court to consider the proceedings in all their aspects and come to an independent conclusion on the materials, apart from the view expressed by the Sessions Judge., In so doing, the High Court will be assisted by the opinion expressed by the Sessions Judge but the law requires that the High Court should come to an independent conclusion of its own. [847E] Jumman & others v. The State of Punjab, A.I.R. 1957 S.C. 469, referred to. (ii)In the present case, assuming the trial court was justified in imposing the capital sentence, the long lapse of time since the imposition of the capital sentence by the trial court and the consideration of the question by this Court, constitutes a relevant ground for reducing the sentence to life imprisonment. The appellant must have been in the condemned cell ever since the death penalty was imposed on him. The appellant must have been subjected to acute mental agony ever since the death penalty was imposed on him. Therefore, the sentence of capital punishment must be reduced to life imprisonment in the present case. [848C] in Piare Dusadh & Others v. Emperor A.I.R. 1944 F.C. 1, the sentence of death was reduced to one of transportation for life when the convict had inter alia, been awaiting execution of death sentence for over a year. JUDGMENT:
CRIMINAL APPELLATE JURISDICTION: Criminal Appeal No. 50 of
1973.
845
Appeal by special leave from the judgment and order dated
January 24, 1972 of the Andhra Pradesh High Court in Cr. A.
No. 796 of 1971 and Referred Trial No. 9 of 1971.
O. P. Rana, for the appellant.
The Judgment of the Court was delivered by
DUA, J.-In this appeal from the judgment and order of the
Andhra Pradesh High Court convicting the appellant for the
murder of one Gadusula Seetha under s. 302, I.P.C. and
sentencing him to death, special leave granted by this Court
was limited only to the question of sentence. The
preparation of the record was dispensed with and the appeal
was directed to be heard on the S.L.P. paper book. In the
order granting special leave dated March 1, 1973 it was
specifically directed as under :
“Let an actual date of hearing of the appeal
be fixed ,which will not be longer than one
month from today, and notice of the actual
date of hearing of the appeal shall be sent to
the respondent forthwith.”
Earlier, on July 5, 1972 the special leave petition has been
placed before the vacation Judge (K. K. Mathew J) and
notice was directed to go to the respondent to show cause
why special leave should not be granted in regard to the
sentence only. It is unfortunate that the matter could not
be placed before the Bench after service of ‘show cause
notice for nearly eight months. The appellant had been
sentenced to death as far back as October 30, 1971 by the
Additional Sessions Judge, West Godavari Division at Eluru
and the death sentence was confirmed by the High Court. on
January 24, 1972..
The prosecution story as upheld by the High Court stated
briefly is that the deceased, who was a married woman, was
having :an illicit intimacy with the appellant and they were
both living at Tadimalla. Before they came to Tadmalla to
settle down there, the deceased was married to one Basavaiah
of Eythapuram. There, she had developed illicit intimacy
with her husband’s brother and is stated to have eloped with
him. Sometime later, she patched up with her husband and
they both then went down to Tadimalla to live there, which
was the native village of the deceased. But there also the
deceased developed illicit intimacy with the appellant who
belonged to Harijan community. Apparently the deceased
belonged to a higher caste. It appears that the appellant
and the deceased started living together in a portion of the
appellant’s house in Harijanwada of Tadimalla village.
According to the testimony of Osha Tharmaiah (P.W. 14) even
,when the deceased was living with the appellant she was
having a liaison with this witness. The deceased met with
her death on
846
April 24, 1971 at about 6 a.m. About 20 days prior to this
date, the deceased left the appellant’s house and started
living in a portion of the house of Gapapati Bapanamma (P.W.
13), the maternal grandmother of Osha Thammaiah (P.W. 14).
According- to P.W. 14 the deceased did so in order to
continue her illicit intimacy with that witness. The
appellant apparently felt distressed on account of this
conduct on the part of the deceased. On the morning of
April 14, 1971, the deceased went to the Panchayat well to
take water to her house and while she was standing there on
the platform of the well, the appellant went there, caught
hold of her pig-tail from behind with his left hand and
delivered two blows on the left side,, of her neck and gave
two or three blows on her left upper fore-arm. The deceased
tried to free herself from the appellant’s grip but fell
down flat about six yards away from the well. The appellant
is said to have delivered another blow with the knife on the
left side of her abdomen which resulted in her intestines
protruding out. The deceased it appears died soon after the
receipt of these injuries.
In the High Court on behalf of the appellant it was argued
that the sentence should be reduced to life imprisonment
because(1) the appellant is a very young man of about 20
years of age; (2) the incident arose out of sexual jealously
and (3) the crime was not pre-meditated. The High Court did
not consider these circumstances to be sufficient to merit a
lesser sentence, because from the evidence of the doctor and
the. postmortem certificate given by him it was evident that
the appellant had inflicted as many as ten incised injuries
out of which two injuries were fatal and even after
inflicting the injuries on the deceased indiscriminately the
appellant stabbed her in the abdomen With such violence that
the intestines actually came out and this happened after the
deceased had fallen down. From the injuries caused by the
appellant to the deceased the High Court felt that the
accused must have intended to murder her and his intention
in attacking the deceased was only to chastise her or to
teach her a lesson. Finding no reason to reduce the
sentence passed by the trial court the High Court confirmed
the capital sentence.
In this Court it was contended on behalf of the appellant
that there was grave provocation for the appellant in that
the appellant had sacrified everything for the sake of
keeping the deceased with him but she had proved unfaithful
and had not only started living with someone else but had
even ridiculed him. It was also contended that the courts
below had completely ignored the effect of the recent
amendment of s.357, Cr. P.C. and that they have proceeded
as if there must be some mitigating circumstance in order to
justify the. imposition of a lesser penalty in case of con-
viction under s. 302, I.P.C.
847
The learned additional Sessions Judge, when dealing with the
question of sentence observed that there were “absolutely no
extenuating circumstances to justify imposition of lesser
sentence”. No doubt, according to the trial court, the
murder was committed in broad day-light in the presence of
many persons in the heart of the Harijanwada and nothing had
transpired on the day of the occurrence which could have
conceivably given any provocation to the appellant so as to
incite him to commit the offence and the murder was
committed in cold blood with pre-meditation. But it does
appear to us that the learned additional Sessions Judge was
perhaps not fully conscious of the amendment and his
approach suggests that he was looking for some mitigating
circumstance to justify the imposition of lesser penalty.
Having found none, the capital sentence was imposed.
In the High Court also when the question of sentence was
raised it was observed as follows :
“It is clear that the accused intended to
murder the deceased. We do not find any
reason to reduce the sentence passed by the
lower court. We confirm the sentence.”
While confirming the capital sentence the High Court had
quite clearly an obligation to itself consider what sentence
should ‘be imposed and not be content with the trial court’s
decision on the point unless some reason was shown for
reducing that sentence. As observed in Jumman & others v.
The State of Punjab(1), in such a case, “it is the duty of
the High Court to consider the proceedings in all their
aspects and come to an independent conclusion on the
materials, apart from the view expressed by the Sessions
Judge. In so doing, the High Court will be assisted by the
opinion expressed by the Sessions Judge, but under the pro-
visions of the law above-mentioned it is for the High Court
to come to an independent conclusion of its own.”
No doubt, as observed by the High Court there were as many
as ten incised injuries on the deceased and injuries nos. 1
and 4 were considered by the medical evidence to be fatal.
It is also clear that on the day of the incident nothing had
happened to cause sudden provocation which should be grave
enough to make the appellant lose his balance of mind. But
in that case an argument would be open to take the offence
out of the purview of ss. 300 and 302, I.P.C. That point
does not appear to be open to the appellant because this
appeal was not admitted on the merits and we are only
required to consider whether on the conclusions of the High
Court and on the assumption that the offence
(1) A. 1. R. 1957 S. C. 469.
848
is one of murder, lesser penalty should be imposed in *,he
present case. Apart from the question of what sentence
should have been imposed by the trial court, in our opinion,
it is open to this Court under Art. 136 of the Constitution
to see what sentence permissible under the law would meet
the ends of justice now when we are called upon to consider
that question. The appellant was clearly on terms of
improper intimacy with the deceased and was perhaps overcome
by a sense of jealousy or indignation of’ what he thought
was unfaithfulness on the part of the deceased. Assuming
the trial court was justified in imposing the capital
sentence, the long lapse of time since the imposition of the
capital sentence by the trial court and the consideration of
the question of sentence by us, in our opinion, constitutes
a relevant ground for reducing the sentence to life
imprisonment. In the present case the appellant must have
been in the condemned cell ever since October 30, 1971 when
the sentence of death was imposed on him by the trial court.
The High Court confirmed the sentence as far back is January
24, 1972. Since then the agonising consciousness and
feeling of being under the sentence of death must have
constantly haunted the appellant. No doubt, this delay has
been caused because of the time taken by the High Court in
disposing of the application for leave to appeal to this
Court and because of the pendency of the application for
special leave to appeal in this Court since October, 1972.
But that cannot detract from the acute mental agony to which
the appellant must have been subjected ever since the
imposition of the capital sentence on him.
We find that in July, 1972 this Court issued notice to the
respondent State to show cause why special leave should not
be granted in regard to the sentence. The notice was
apparently issued without any delay. But the matter was
unfortunately not set down for hearing till March 1, 1973.
This delay was perhaps due to the fact that the respondent-
State did not put in appearance. Indeed, he State was not
represented at the hearing either of the special leave
petition or of the appeal before us. Now the importance of
speedy disposal of cases involving sentence of death has
been recognised by this Court, for, in r. 21(2) of O.XXI,,it
is expressly provided that in such cases the printed record
shall be made ready and despatched to this Court within a
period of 60 days after the receipt of intimation from the
registry of this Court of the filing of the petition of
appeal or of the order granting special leave to appeal.
The same anxiety and concern for speedy disposal of special
leave petitions in such cases is equally desirable. It
appears that the importance of speedy hearing of the
petition for special leave was not realised in this case.
In our view, the neglect or unwillingness of the State to
enter appearance should not have prevented the posting of
the special leave. petition for hearing with the greatest
possible dispatch.
849
On the facts and circumstances of this case we feel that the
interests of justice require that the sentence of death
should be reduced to that of life imprisonment and we so
order. The fact that the State of Andhra Pradesh has not
cared to enter appearance in spite of notice suggests that
in the opinion of the legal advisors of the State there was
no good cause to show against the reduction of sentence. In
Piare Dusadh & others v. Emperor(1) the sentence of death
was reduced to one of transportation for life when the
convict had inter alia been awaiting execution of death
sentence for over a year. The Federal Court there
observed:—
“In committing the offence the appellant must
have been actuated by jealousy or by
indignation either of which would tend further
to disturb the balance of his mind. He has
besides been awaiting the execution of his
death sentence for over a year. We think that
in this case a sentence of transportation for
life would be more appropriate than the
sentence of death.”
These observations are equally pertinent to the case in
hand.
The appeal is accordingly allowed and the appellant’s
sentence is reduced to that of imprisonment for life.
S.C. Appeal allowed
(1) A.I.R. 1944 F.C.I.
850