INDIA: GUJARAT HIGH COURT SPARES TWO CHILD KILLERS THE GALLOWS

February 21, 2019:

The Gujarat High Court on 18 February 2019 saved two persons—Akshay Patel and Kuldip Panchal—who had brutally murdered a four-and-a-half-year-old kid for ransom, from the gallows, and converted the death sentence awarded to them by a Visnagar court to 30 years of life imprisonment without remission.The court, while setting aside the death sentence, remarked that the duo had committed a heinous crime of murdering an innocent, helpless, and a defenceless boy aged four-years-and-five-months, and they are liable to be punished severely. However, it clarified that it is not a case which falls within the category of the rarest of the rare cases.