Supreme Court: Death Sentence Commuted to Life Imprisonment for Rape, Murder Convict

The Supreme Court on Friday commuted the death sentence of a man convicted of repeatedly raping and murdering his 6-year-old stepdaughter. [Waris v. State of Madhya Pradesh]A Bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta and Vijay Bishnoi upheld his conviction but ordered that he spend the remainder of his natural life in prison, without remission.The Court found that the convict had killed the child to silence her and conceal the sexual assault. It described this as an aggravating circumstance “of the highest order”, but said the gravity of the crime could not, by itself, establish that he was beyond reform.“A crime may be exceptionally grave and its perpetrator may yet not be shown to be beyond reform, and where that is so the law, as it has recently been applied, does not exact his life,” the Court said.Justice Vikram Nath, Justice Sandeep Mehta and Justice Vijay BishnoiThe Bench noted that convict had no criminal antecedents, his conduct in custody had been satisfactory and the State had led no evidence that he was incapable of reform. It found that imprisonment for the rest of his life would adequately punish the crime and protect society.“The aggravating feature distinguishes the crime, but it does not distinguish the criminal in the respect that matters to the choice of sentence,” the Court said.According to the prosecution, the child’s mother married Waris in August 2017 and moved with her daughter into his home. The Court noted that she was his fourth wife and that h