The Madras High Court has acquitted one of the two persons who were awarded death sentence and ordered the other to undergo double life imprisonment for killing an 11-year-old girl after murdering her father in Tirupur in October 2015, for failing to repay a loan of ₹52,000.
A Division Bench of Justices P.N. Prakash and C.V. Karthikeyan set aside the conviction as well as the death sentence imposed on V. Rangaraj, 41, the fifth accused in the case, by a Mahila Court on the ground that the prosecution had not marshalled sufficient material evidence to prove his involvement in the crime.
The judges, however, confirmed the conviction of the first accused Selvam alias Koolai Selvam alias Subramaniam, 45, on two counts under Section 302 (murder) of the IPC and ordered that he should undergo double life imprisonment consecutively and not concurrently. Giving reasons for not confirming the death sentence imposed by the trial court, the judges said: “In the present case, though we hold that Selvam (A1) is guilty of the murder of Thangavel (D1) and Mahalakshmi (D2), the question to be addressed is whether these acts warrant death punishment or a life imprisonment, which would act not only as a retribution for his crime, but also to some extent hopefully reform him...”
‘No criminal record’
Pointing out that the convict had no criminal antecedents but for this case, the judges said that “the court should also ask the question whether he would still have pushed himself to commit a grisly crime of murder” if he had been able to recover the loan amount from the first deceased. “If the answer is ‘yes,’ then certainly, he would deserve capital punishment, but, there is doubt that he might not have exhibited the same conduct, then it is only just that the court also recognises the fact and awards him life imprisonment and in this case, life imprisonment consecutively,” they added.
In so far as three other convicts M. Deivasigamani (41), K. Nagaraj (29) and S. Anandan alias Anandam (29), who had been ordered to undergo single life imprisonment by the trial court for the murder of Thangavel, the High CourtBench confirmed the punishment imposed on the former alone and acquitted the other two persons from all charges for want of evidence.
