The State government on Tuesday moved an appeal in the Kerala High Court seeking to enhance the sentence awarded to all the 12 accused in a case relating to the murder of Revolutionary Marxist Party (RMP) leader T.P. Chandrashekaran.
In the appeal, the Special Public Prosecutor pointed out that the lower court should have awarded death sentence to all the accused in the case, for the offences proved against them had come under the category of rarest of rare cases.
Eleven of the 12 convicts in the murder case had been given life sentence by the Special Court Additional Sessions Court, Kozhikode.
The appeal said that the Special Court had failed to appreciate the evidence in its true perspective while awarding the sentence to the accused. The sessions court should have appreciated the fact that the gruesome murder was a ‘pre-planned, cold-blooded and a dastardly one.’
The Special court had already found that the first seven accused had committed murder in the most cruel manner. But the Special Court did not take into account the fact that the first seven accused were professional assassins and hardcore criminals who posed a threat to the society at large and they were beyond the pale of reformation.