The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Wednesday confirmed the death sentence imposed on a man by a trial court for the sexual assault and murder of a seven-year-old girl in 2020 in Pudukkottai district.
The convict, Samivel alias Raja, sexually assaulted the girl. Later, fearing she would reveal about it to others, he murdered her and threw the body into a dry pond. In 2020, the Pudukkottai Mahila Court imposed the death sentence on the convict. The child’s mother was a woman with special needs.
A Division Bench of Justices S. Vaidyanathan and G. Jayachandran confirmed the sentence in the referred trial. The judges took into consideration the brutality of the attack, the barbaric manner in which the child was murdered and the mental agony undergone by the parents. “We find that except the death sentence, no other sentence will be adequate”, the court said.
The judges said, “It is pertinent to mention that everyone’s mind contains a liar, a cheat and a sinner and a man cannot be judged by his outer appearance, as Adolf Hitler, who ordered the execution of some eight million people and was responsible for the deaths of many millions more, hated cruelty to animals and was a vegetarian”.
If a person like the convict is allowed to survive in this world, he will definitely pollute the mind of other co-prisoners, who will be on the verge of release from jail in which he is confined. When the attitude of a man turns into one of a beast having no mercy over other creatures, he should be punished and sent to the eternal world, the court said.
“We were a little hesitant initially to take away the life of a person by way of a judicial order and thought of converting the punishment into one of life imprisonment. But, after due deliberation and contemplation, we were reminded of the preaching of Lord Krishna to Arjuna in the battlefield that everyone is going to disappear from the world, even if he [Arjuna] does not shoot the enemies with arrows, even though they are relatives/known persons”, the judges observed.
Further, the court said, when a particular duty is given to a person, he has to discharge the same without fear or favour. Referring to the song sung by Seerkazhi S. Govindarajan in the 1964 Tamil movie, Karnan , the judges said, “The crux/moral of the song is that when you are entrusted with a task, that has to be discharged without any deviation and without bothering about the criticism being made by others and the good, evil and other things vested with him. In the song the word ‘bravery’ is mentioned, which denotes ‘courage’ to kill his enemies having evil character. Similar to that, the word ‘courage’ can be fitted to this case to mean that we have to discharge our duties without any fear or favour courageously as per the oath taken by us”.
The judges also quoted the Thirukkural , the Holy Bible and the Holy Quran in the judgment.
“In all fairness, we find that the judgment of the trial court fulfilled all the touchstone to determine that it is one of the rarest of rare cases for imposition of the death sentence, as imposition of any other punishment much less life imprisonment is completely insufficient and inadequate and would not meet the ends of justice”, the judges said.
