AMRUTLAL SOMESHWAR JOSHI Vs. STATE OF MAHARASHTRA II

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Amrutlal Someshwar Joshi, the petitioner in this review petition is the appellant in Criminal Appeal No. 87/94 which has been dismissed by us on 10-8-94. The appellant has been convicted by the trial Court under Section 302, I.P.C. and sentenced to death. The same has been confirmed by the High Court. We heard Criminal Appeal No. 87/94 filed by him in this Court at length and ultimately dismissed the same holding that the appellant killed three persons including a child aged about three years in a brutal and diabolical manner with a view to commit robbery. We also held that the motive was heinous and the crime committed was a cold-blooded, brutal and diabolical one and that his case fell within the category of 'rarest of rare cases'. Accordingly we confirmed the judgments of the courts below awarding death sentence to the petitioner herein. Hence the present Review Petition has been filed seeking review of our judgment dated 10-8-94 in Criminal Appeal No. 87/94.

(2.) In the meanwhile a separate petition dated 22-8-94 to review the judgment in Criminal Appeal No. 87/ 94 sent by the convicted accused from jail is received which is not separately numbered. In this review petition as well as the regular review petition filed through counsel, some points regarding appreciation of evidence by this Court have been raised. We have examined these points and we see no merit in any of them. It may be mentioned here that all the relevant evidence has been considered in detail and thereafter we reached the conclusion that the said items of evidence considered by us by themselves are sufficient to bring home the guilt to the accused and we accordingly confirmed the concurrent findings of the courts below. There is no need to consider each one of them again in these review petitions. We may incidentally mention here that in the petition sent from jail the convicted accused has given his age as 25 years. He, however, has not raised any point regarding his age stating it should be taken as a mitigating circumstance. Learned counsel for the petitioner, however, mainly concentrated on the age of the convicted accused on the date of commission of the offence in support of his plea that the young age should be treated as a mitigating circumstance in the matter of awarding death sentence.

(3.) Since this is a case of death sentence, we have heard the learned counsel for the petitioner as well as learned counsel for the State. Learned counsel for the petitioner submitted that the petitioner on the date of occurrence i.e. 4-8-87 was only 17 years old and therefore having regard to his age, death sentence ought not to have been awarded. In support of this submission strong reliance is placed on a judgment of this Court in Harnam v. State of U.P., (1976) 1 SCC 163 : (AIR 1976 SC 2071) which was followed in Raisul v. State of U.P., (1976) 4 SCC 301 : (AIR 1977 SC 1822). In Harnam's case, Justice P. N. Bhagwati, as he then was, having held that the crime committed by the appellant was a most reprehensible and heinous disclosing brutality and callousness to human life, yet having noted that the appellant was of 16 years of age at the time of commission of crime, however, held that a murderer who is below 18 years of age at the time of commission of the offence should be considered to be "too young" and that "he would be entitled to the clemency of penal justice and it would not be appropriate to impose the extreme penalty of death on him". In Raisul's case, Justice P. N. Bhagwati, who spoke for the Bench in a short judgment following the judgment in Harnam's case, again held that the appellant Raisul was below 18 years of age at the time of commission of the offence and therefore death sentence should not have been imposed on him.