DALBIR SINOH Vs. STATE OF PUNJAB

JUDGEMENT

(1.) ):- Death Sentence on death sentence is Parliament's function. Interpretative non-application of death sentence when legislative alternatives exist is within judicial jurisdiction. The onerous option to spare the lives of the appellants to be spent in prison or to hand them over to the hangman to be jettisoned out of terrestrial life into 'the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns' is the crucial function this Court has to exercise in the present appeal.

(2.) Sir Winston Churchill, in his oftquoted observation, said:

(3.) We may remind the intractable retentionists that the British Royal Commission, after studying statistics from six abolitionist countries, namely, Switzerland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, observed: "The evidence that we ourselves receive in these countries was to the effect that released murderers who commit further crimes of violence are rare, and those who become useful citizens are common."