Madras High Court commutes death to life sentence for rapist-killer

Chennai: Citing mitigating circumstances, the Madras high court has commuted the death sentence awarded to an accused, who raped and murdered a young woman in the Ramanathapuram village in Tiruvarur district on November 23, 2013,  to life imprisonment.

A division bench comprising Justices S. Nagamuthu and N. Authinathan, however, made it clear that the accused shall not be considered for any remission by the government for 20 year.

Disposing of a referred trial by the Mahila Court, Tiruvarur, the bench, partly allowed an appeal from the accused Manivel.   The prosecution case was that on November 23, 2013, when the 28-year-old woman was returning home from work by bicycle, the accused, waiting for her by sitting on the culvert near a small channel at Ramanathapuram village, intercepted her, dragged her to a field and in the midst of the crops, he pushed her down and raped her. When she resisted, he attacked her and smothered her to death.

He tied the dead body with the cycle using the dupatta, took the dead body with the cycle to the channel and pushed the same into the water. The Mahila Court had on September 20, 2016 awarded death sentence to him and referred the trial for confirmation to the high court. The accused also preferred an appeal against the order.

The prosecution has proved beyond reasonable doubt that it was this accused who had waylaid the deceased, raped her, killed her, the bench said the act of the accused in killing the deceased would squarely fall within the first limb of section 300 IPC. Therefore, the trial court was right in convicting the accused. However, coming to the quantum of punishment, "In our considered view, this case would not fall within the category of "rarest of rare" cases as per the "rarest of rare" doctrine propounded by the Constitution bench of the Supreme Court", the bench added.

The bench said there were lots of mitigating circumstances in this case. The accused was a young man, aged 23 years at the time of occurrence. He had no bad antecedents. Driven by a sexual urge he committed rape and to escape from the clutches of law threw the dead body into the water. Having regard to these mitigating circumstances, we are of the view that this is not a fit case to impose the death penalty. Hence, the accused is liable to be punished by imprisonment for life", the bench added.