NARENDER YADAV Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This petition under Article 32 of the Constitution of India has been filed after the applicant has been sentenced to death by this Court while disposing of the criminal appeal by the State. The learned Sessions Judge convicted other accused persons under Section 302 IPC, but awarded death sentence to accused Dharmendra and Narender and rest four persons were sentenced to imprisonment for life. Reasons given by the learned Sessions judge for awarding a different sentence of death to these two accused persons were their sadistic goal, the motive and they being the principal perpetrators of the crime. Undoubtedly, a ghastly murder took place whereby five persons of a family were annihilated by these accused persons. When the matter came to the High Court for confirmation of death sentence as against dharmendra and Narender and the other accused persons assailing their conviction, the High Court did not confirm the sentence of death, but it confirmed the conviction of all the accused persons and sentenced all of them to imprisonment for life. The accused persons assailed their conviction and sentence by filing a special leave petition which was dismissed by this Court. Against that order a review petition was filed which was also dismissed.

(2.) The State, however, being aggrieved by the commutation of death sentence to life as against Dharmendra and Narender, came up in appeal to this Court. That appeal was considered by this Court and by the impugned judgment, this Court came to the conclusion that this could be one of the "rarest of rare case" and therefore awarded death sentence to these two accused persons, who filed an application for review of the said judgment. The same having been dismissed, the present petition under Article 32 of the constitution has been filed by accused Narender alone.

(3.) The learned counsel appearing for the petitioner contended that the judgment of this Court awarding death sentence against two of the accused persons contains certain apparent error thereby causing gross miscarriage of justice and therefore the Court should entertain this petition under Article 32 and consider the question of sentence afresh. According to tile learned counsel for the petitioner, the Court in the impugned judgment had come to the conclusion that the dismissal of the earlier SLP tantamounts to dismissal on merits though the same was dismissed in limine; further, the Court has not followed the procedure applicable to a case when a sentence is enhanced and there has been an infraction of Article 21 of the Constitution. The learned counsel further urged that the very act of the State to choose to file appeal only against the two persons leaving aside the four other accused persons is grossly discriminatory and the Court has not applied its mind as to why the state should be permitted to have this discrimination. Last but not the least, the learned counsel urged that the very fact that between the judgment of the learned Sessions Judge awarding death sentence and the judgment of this court awarding death sentence, there has been a lapse of four years during which period, the condemned prisoners have the expectation to live and that expectation could not have been taken away by the Court in delivering the judgment after four years.