Overview

• On June 19 a division bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court commuted the convict’s death sentence to 25 years’ rigorous imprisonment without remission and imposed a Rs 10,000 fine with an additional year of jail in default of payment.
• Justices Vivek Agarwal and Devnarayan Mishra held that although the assault was horrifying, it did not exhibit the extreme cruelty or depravity required for capital punishment under Supreme Court precedents.
• The court noted the 20-year-old defendant was uneducated, belonged to a tribal community, had no prior record and had left home early to work in a roadside eatery.
• A special POCSO court in Khandwa district had convicted him in April 2023 for abducting, raping and throttling a four-year-old girl before leaving her for dead and initially awarded the death penalty.
• The ruling underscores the judiciary’s nuanced application of the 'rarest of rare' doctrine in child sexual abuse cases by balancing the severity of the crime against individual circumstances.