Overview

• A three-judge bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sanjay Karol and Sandeep Mehta set aside the Supreme Court’s 2017 sentencing order and left the conviction undisturbed.
• The matter is remitted for a sentencing-only rehearing to be listed by the Chief Justice of India, with directions to follow the Manoj (2022) framework.
• The bench held that Article 32 allows reopening the sentencing stage in capital cases where mandated psychological, psychiatric and social evaluations were not obtained or considered.
• The court stressed this is an exceptional corrective power to protect fundamental rights under Articles 14 and 21 and warned it cannot become a routine route to revisit concluded cases.
• By allowing the petition, the court acknowledged Manoj’s retrospective reach on sentencing, creating a narrowly tailored avenue that other death row prisoners may seek where similar safeguards were breached.