Shocked over a macabre crime, the Madras High Court has ordered that the life sentence imposed on a youth for murdering a Class VIII student, by stabbing a knife into his temple, should not be remitted or commuted for any reason whatsoever for at least 30 years since the offence had been committed right in the classroom of a government school.
Justices R. Subbiah and A.D. Jagadish Chandira also directed the State government as well as the Director General of Police to pay a compensation of ₹3 lakh to the parents of the deceased from the Victim Relief Fund. The orders were passed while disposing of an appeal preferred by the convict on several grounds. One among them was that he was a minor when he was accused of having had unnatural sex with the victim.
Accepting the convict’s plea that he had not completed 18 years of age in 2013 when he was accused of having had sex with the victim boy on several occasions, the judges set aside the life sentence imposed on him by the trial court under Section 6 (sexual assault) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act of 2012. They, however, confirmed the conviction under that provision.
Though the convict attempted to wriggle out of the charge of murder too, but the judges refused to accept his reasons for this. They said the appellant had attained majority at the time of murdering the boy on November 28, 2014 and therefore he must necessarily undergo life sentence under Section 302 (murder) of Indian Penal Code.
Authoring the judgment for the Bench, Mr. Justice Subbiah said the murder was so gruesome that after stabbing the victim boy on the temple, the convict had fled leaving the knife intact in the head since he could not pull it out.
Though the trial court in Virudhunagar district had imposed two life sentences on the convict on January 11, 2016 and ordered that they must be undergone consecutively, the judges pointed out that the Supreme Court had in 2016 held that life sentences could not be undergone consecutively. “The logic behind it lies in the fact that imprisonment for life is a sentence for the remainder of the life of the offender unless, of course, the remaining sentence is commuted or remitted,” the Bench said.
