“They deserve life in prison to repent of the offense they have committed,” said the bench.
Mumbai:
Bombay High Court today handed down life imprisonment, the death penalty, to three convicts in the 2013 gang rape of a 22-year-old photojournalist inside the defunct Shakti Mills compound. in central Mumbai, saying that they “deserve life imprisonment. repent of their crimes”.
A bench of Judges Sadhana Jadhav and Prithviraj Chavan refused to endorse the death sentences for Vijay Jadhav, Mohammad Qasim Shaikh and Mohammad Ansari, and reduce them to life in prison for the rest of their lives.
The proclamation bench declares that it cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that the offense has shaken the conscience of the whole society and that rape is a violation of human rights, but the death sentence is irreversible.
It added that the courts have a duty to consider cases fairly and cannot ignore the procedure provided for by law.
“Death ends the concept of repentance. It cannot be said that defendants only deserve the death penalty. They deserve life imprisonment to repent of the crimes they have committed,” the tape said.
It added that convicts would not receive pardon or reduced sentences because they were not allowed to integrate into society and because there was no scope for re-education.
In March 2014, a trial court convicted four people of gang rape of a 22-year-old photojournalist inside the abandoned Shakti Mills compound in central Mumbai on August 22, 2013.
The court later sentenced three of the convicts to death as they were also found guilty of gang raping a 19-year-old telephone operator at the same location months before raping the photojournalist. .
Three people have been sentenced to death under the IPC’s revised section 376(e) stating that the maximum sentence of life or death can be awarded to repeat offenders.
The fourth convict, Siraj Khan, was sentenced to life in prison, and a juvenile defendant was sent to a correctional facility.
In April 2014, the trio approached the high court to challenge the validity of section 376(e) of the IPC and argued that the trial had acted beyond its power to award the death penalty to the court. surname.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
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