Kerala - Kochi   

Death sentence confirmed

Kochi: A Division Bench of the Kerala High Court on Wednesday confirmed the death sentence awarded by the Additional Sessions Court II, Thiruvananthapuram, to an accused charged with criminal assault.

The Bench of Justice J.B. Koshy and Justice K.T. Sankaran confirmed the death sentence awarded to Sebastian of Poonthura while dismissing his appeal. The court also considered the judgment referred to by the sessions judge for the Bench’s confirmation of the sentence.

The murder took place on August 1, 2005. The prosecution case was that the accused broke in to the house of Sivan Pillai in the fishermen colony in the night, took away Mr. Pillai’s two-year-old daughter who was sleeping with her mother and stole the ornaments worn by the child.

The accused took the child out of the house, criminally violated her and threw her body into a nearby canal. Imposing the death sentence on the accused on March 12, 2007, the sessions judge said that the nature of evidence was circumstantial.

But it could not be treated as a mitigating circumstance for giving lesser punishment.

The court said that “rape was a heinous crime, much worse when the age of the victim was below 12 years”.

The court found that the accused had been in jail for committing the same type of offence. The court noted that the reformative theory would not be applicable in his case.

Such criminals would have no right to live among the people who loved and cared for children. Saying that the case which involved brutal rape coupled with murder could be placed in the rarest of rare category, the judge awarded capital punishment to the accused. The Bench also said that it was a rarest of rare case considering the gravity of the offence and the circumstances of the case.

A Bench comprising Chief Justice H.L. Dattu and Justice K.M. Joseph adjourned to March 25 the hearing on an appeal filed by the government and the Director-General of Police against a single judge’s observations on the political violence in Kannur.

The Bench posted to March 24 hearing of further arguments on the writ petitions seeking a CBI inquiry and judicial inquiry into the HMT land deal. The Advocate-General (AG) produced in the court the report of a committee headed by the Chief Secretary and also the legal opinion given by the AG .

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