INDIA: HC COMMUTES DEATH SENTENCE OF THREE TO LIFE

July 8, 2013: In India, the Allahabad High Court commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment, awarded to three persons, including a woman, in connection with the murder of a 70-year-old woman in their house in Chandauli district in 2005.
The accused — brothers Ram Ashish and Ram Dheeraj, and their mother, Mangari Devi — had allegedly killed the woman in the hope that one of them (Ashish) would get cured of his mental illness, if they "sacrificed" a Brahmin. The three were awarded death sentence by the trial court in October 2012.
Passing the order on their appeal against the death sentence, a division bench of Justices Amar Saran and Bachchoo Lal said that although the prosecution established the complicity of the accused in the crime, the case did not fall in the category of the rarest of the rare and, therefore, it was being commuted to life imprisonment. (Sources: indianexpress.com, 09/07/2013)