Supreme Court: The Bench comprising of A.K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan JJ., addressed an appeal of a convict punished under Sections 302, 498-A and 506 IPC and modified the punishment granted to the convict by the High Court.
In the instant case, the appellant was punished for the offence of killing his wife and thereafter tried to kill himself. For the said convict the trial court awarded death sentence, which was further converted into life imprisonment for the reason that the circumstances were not to be put into the category of ‘rarest of the rare’ case. The High Court on awarding the same also stated that the minimum period of the sentence would be of 30 years without remission.
Therefore, a notice was issued that whether the High Court was justified in putting a cap of 30 years of life imprisonment or not?
While keeping the facts and circumstances of the case into consideration, the Supreme Court decided that the High Court should not have stated that the life sentence for a minimum period of 30 years must be served without remission. The appeal was disposed of by deleting the portion of the impugned order by making it a case of life imprisonment simpliciter. [Nitin Balkishan Gaikwad v. State of Maharashtra, 2018 SCC OnLine SC 690, dated 09-07-2018]
