IN THE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA
CRIMINAL APPELATE JURISDICTION
CRIMINAL APPEAL NO 87 OF 2007
Santosh Kumar Singh …. appellant
Versus
State thr. CBI …..Respondent
JUDGEMENT
Honorable Justice HARJIT SINGH BEDI. J
JUDGE: the appeal arises out of the following facts:
1. The deceased, Priyadarshini Mattoo, was residing with her parents at B-
10/7098, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi and was a student of the LL.B. course at
the University of Delhi Campus Law Centre, and had at the relevant time
completed the 5 th Semester and was in the final 6 th Semester. The
appellant, Santosh Kumar Singh had also been a student in the same
faculty and had completed his LL.B. in December 1994. It appears that
the appellant had been attracted to the deceased and even though he
had passed out from the Law Centre in 1994, he had continued to visit
the campus even thereafter.
2. The trial court observed that the continuous stalking of the deceased by
the appellant despite complaints to the police showed his utter disregard
of the rule of law and in conclusion held that “circumstances No.1, 2 and
3 are thus held to have been proved beyond any shadow of doubt by the
prosecution.” The court then examined circumstances Nos.4, 5 and 10
cumulatively and held that the appellant had indeed been seen in the
University Campus Law Centre on the 23rd Crl. Appeal No.87 of 2007
January 1996 riding his motorcycle wearing a helmet with an intact visor
and that on the same day in the afternoon he had been seen by PW2 Sh.
Kuppuswami at the gate of the house of the deceased carrying a helmet
with a visor. The court further opined that when the helmet had been
seized on the 25th January 1996 it was seen to be in a badly damaged
condition and that the broken pieces of the visor which had been
recovered from the site of the crime besmeared with the blood of
deceased conclusively proved that the visor had been broken during the
commission of the murder as it had been used to bludgeon the deceased
into submission.
3. The trial court has held that the omission to produce the defence
evidence in Court was unbecoming of the investigating agency but that
the appellant himself was also guilty of not producing any evidence in his
defence and by some curious reasoning has opined that : “The accused
too has not assisted the court in discharging the onus which was upon
him to justify the defence taken by him in the matter of alleged injury.
Consequently, on the face of an injury, on 5 th metacarpal on the date of
crime of murder, with swelling and tenderness, the court is of the view
that the injury possibly is fresh but on account of lack of fair play on the
part of the CBI, it cannot say that the defence of the accused is not
plausible. Therefore this circumstance will have to be considered in both
ways in the Crl. Appeal No.87 of 2007 cumulative effect of various
circumstances to consider if the case is proved beyond reasonable
doubt.”
4. We, accordingly, endorse the opinion of the High Court on circumstances
8 and 12. The onus to prove his defence and the circumstances relating
to his injury and treatment were within the special knowledge of the
appellant. He could, therefore, not keep silent and say that the obligation
rested on the prosecution to prove its case.
Judgement
“We have carefully and extensively gone through the material on record with
the aid of counsel for the parties. Since this is an appeal from judgment of
acquittal we can interfere only if we are satisfied that the findings of the trial
court are perverse and have resulted in grave miscarriage of Crl. Appeal No.87
of 2007 justice. High Court while hearing an appeal against acquittal has the
power to reconsider the whole evidence and to come to its own conclusion in
place of the findings of the trial court but only if the decision of the trial court
is such which could not have been arrived at all by reasoning.”
We now come to the question of sentence. It has been submitted by Mr. Sushil
Kumar that the present case was not one which fell in the category of the
‘rarest of rare cases’ as several mitigating circumstances with respect to the
sentence were discernable. He has first pointed out that the High Court had
reversed an acquittal judgment based exclusively on circumstantial evidence.
He has further argued that the appellant was a young man about 24/25 of age
on the date of incident and had been led astray by the vagaries of youth and
that after his acquittal in December 1999, he had got married (in the year
2003) and a baby girl had been born to him and his wife before the judgment
of the High Court had been delivered in October 2006. These submissions have
been stoutly opposed by the learned Crl. Appeal No.87 of 2007 ASG who has
submitted that even the trial court had given a positive finding that the motive
and murder were truly barbaric and revolting and had been preceded by
continuous harassment of the deceased over a period of two years and the
appellant was an advocate with an over indulgent police officer father who had
repeatedly come to the rescue of his son. 38. We have considered the
arguments of the learned counsel and have also gone through the judgments
relied upon by them in support of their respective cases. We think that the
answer on the question of the sentence can be found in the judgment of the
High Court itself. We quote from paragraph 3 of the sentencing part of the
judgment delivered on 30th October 2006: Crl. Appeal No.87 of 2007 “We have
heard learned counsel for the parties and have given our consideration to what
has been placed before us. We need hardly say that sentencing is the most
difficult part of a judgment and this indeed has been a case here. There is
absolutely no doubt in our mind that what was required of Santosh Singh was
exemplary behaviour being a son of a police officer and also a lawyer himself
yet with a premeditated approach he continued to harass the victim for nearly
two years and ultimately in spite of repeated warnings by the police and his
undertakings to them went about committing a most ghastly act. The act itself
sent ripples in the society and showed how insecure a citizen can get against
this kind of a person. In the various judgments which have been referred to by
counsel from both sides we find the principles laid down to the considered
while deciding the question of sentence are best reported in ‘Bachan Singh vs.
State of Punjab’ AIR 1980 SC 898 and ‘Machhi Singh vs. State of Punjab, 1983
SC 211. These cases sum up the law on the subject of death penalty which we
have kept in mind. Evaluating the circumstances in favour and against the
convict which have already been enumerated above, we find that the
aggravating circumstances referred to by Crl. Appeal No.87 of 2007 the
Additional Solicitor General for outweigh the circumstances which according to
the counsel to the convict are mitigating circumstances, although we do not
consider them to be so. We are thus of the opinion that for a crime of this sort
which has been committed with premeditation and in a brutal manner the
convict deserves no other sentence but death.” The underlined words
themselves give a hint as to the sentence that should be awarded in this case.
Undoubtedly the sentencing part is a difficult one and often exercises the mind
of the Court but where the option is between a life sentence and a death
sentence, the options are indeed extremely limited and if the court itself feels
some difficulty in awarding one or the other, it is only appropriate that the
lesser sentence should be awarded. This is the underlying philosophy behind
‘the rarest of the rare’ principle. Furthermore, we see that the mitigating
circumstances need to be Crl. Appeal No.87 of 2007 taken into account, more
particularly that the High Court has reversed a judgment of acquittal based on
circumstantial evidence, the appellant was a young man of 24 at the time of
the incident and, after acquittal, had got married and was the father of a girl
child. Undoubtedly, also the appellant would have had time for reflection over
the events of the last fifteen years, and to ponder over the predicament that he
now faces, the reality that his father died a year after his conviction and the
prospect of a dismal future for his young family. On the contrary, there is
nothing to suggest that he would not be capable of reform. There are
extremely aggravating circumstances as well. In particular we notice the
tendency of parents to be over indulgent to their progeny often resulting in the
most horrendous of situations. These situations are exacerbated when an
accused belongs to a category Crl. Appeal No.87 of 2007 with unlimited power
or pelf or even more dangerously, a volatile and heady cocktail of the two. The
reality that such a class does exist is for all to see and is evidenced by regular
and alarming incidents such as the present one. Nevertheless, to our mind, the
balance sheet tilts marginally in favour of the appellant, and the ends of justice
would be met if the sentence awarded to him is commuted from death to life
imprisonment under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code; the other part of
the sentence being retained as it is. With this modification in the sentence, the
appeal is dismissed. ……………………………..J. (HARJIT SINGH BEDI)
……………………………..J. (CHANDRAMAULI KR. PRASAD
