SC commutes death sentence of man who raped, murdered 6-year-old stepdaughter

The bench headed by Justice Vikram Nath observed that when the protector turns predator, it strikes not only at the child but at the security of a family relationship.

The Supreme Court on Thursday commuted the death sentence of a man convicted of raping and murdering his six-year-old stepdaughter in Madhya Pradesh in 2018, directing that he remain in prison for the rest of his natural life without remission.

The Supreme Court on Thursday commuted the death sentence of a man convicted of raping and murdering his six-year-old stepdaughter in Madhya Pradesh in 2018

The bench headed by Justice Vikram Nath observed that when the protector turns predator, it strikes not only at the child but at the security of a family relationship.

The incident took place in Madhya Pradesh in 2018, for which the convict, Waris, was sentenced to death by the trial court and the high court. Upholding his conviction, the top court altered his death sentence after it noticed that the 56-year-old man showed the possibility of reform as he maintained good conduct in jail and had no criminal antecedents other than the present case.

However, what the court could not reconcile with was the helplessness of the victim and the position of the accused as a stepfather.

“The appellant made the home the site of her violation and made himself the author of it. The betrayal of the trust reposed in a guardian, and the transformation of the protector into the predator, is an aggravating circumstance of a high order, for it strikes not only at the child but at the security of the familial relation itself, upon which the safety of every child depends,” the bench said.

The child was raped for months by the stepfather and when he suspected that she had shared this with her mother, he got infuriated and throttled her to death on April 21, 2018. Incidentally, this was the day when Parliament introduced the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2018, which introduced a new offence – Section 376AB in the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which punished the rape of a woman aged under 12 years with a minimum punishment of 20 years and a maximum punishment of death. Waris was charged under this provision along with relevant provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO).

The bench, also comprising Justices Sandeep Mehta and Vijay Bishnoi, said, “The victim, silenced in life, is not silenced in law, and her voice, reaching the court through her mother and confirmed by the marks upon her body, bears witness to what was done to her.”

Besides the evidence of the girl’s mother, the court relied on the victim’s dying declaration, in which she disclosed to her mother the atrocities done to her by her stepfather. The court found that the accused had three former wives who had left him owing to his violence.

By December 2018, the trial court sentenced him to death for the separate offences of murder under Section 302 of the IPC and rape under Section 376AB of the IPC. However, the top court noticed that on the same day, the trial court pronounced the order on conviction and sentence. As a result, no material relevant to the individualised assessment of the accused was considered.

Before arriving at a conclusion, the top court directed a psychological evaluation of the convict and received a Mitigation Investigation Report that gave details about his troubled childhood, poor and deprived upbringing, and incidents during the eight years of incarceration he suffered as part of his death sentence. Even a medical board examined him at Central Jail, Ujjain, which found him physically and mentally fit.

While the horrific crime had several aggravating circumstances, the court balanced them with the mitigating factors, primarily the fact that he had no criminal antecedents, no disciplinary record in jail and satisfactory conduct with other prisoners.

“We accordingly commute the sentence of death imposed upon the appellant for the offences under Section 302 and Section 376AB of the IPC to a sentence of imprisonment for the remainder of his natural life, that is, imprisonment for life which shall extend to the whole of the remainder of his natural life and upon which no remission shall be granted,” the court held.