04 July 2014 :

the Supreme Court commuted the death sentence of a 26-year-old youth to life term for killing a woman and her son saying that the convict is an educated person so there are chances of his reform.
A bench of Justices H L Dattu and S J Mukhopadhaya commuted the death awarded to Santosh Kumar Singh on the ground that the case does not fall within the realms of “rarest of the rare category.”
The bench said, “It is not the case of the prosecution that the appellant cannot be reformed or that the accused is a social menace. Apart from the incident in question there is no criminal antecedent of the appellant.”
According to police, Santosh was known to the family of one Gulam Mohd as he used to come to their house to teach the children. On 7 May 2010, he came to their house in Singrauli in Madhya Pradesh and returned after sometime and attacked Gulam’s wife and their children with an iron hammer. Thereafter, he looted cash and jewellery from their house. The woman died on the spot while their son succumbed to injuries later.
The trial court had awarded death sentence to Santosh and the sentence was also upheld by the Madhya Pradesh High Court.