26 September 2023 :

The Rajasthan High Court, Jaipur Bench, has set aside the death sentence of a man who was convicted of rape and murder of four-year-old girl and has commuted it to the life imprisonment, Verdictum website reported on August 16, 2023. 
The Court said that the case did not fall within the ambit of rarest of rare case.  
A death sentence was awarded to the aforesaid man by a Special Judge, POCSO Court for the offences under Sections 363, 302, and 201 of IPC (Indian Penal Code) and Section 5(M)/6 of POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act, in alternate Section 376(AB) of IPC and Section 84 of Juvenile Justice (Care & Protection of Children) Act, 2015 (hereinafter referred to as the JJ Act).  
A Division Bench comprising Justice Pankaj Bhandari and Justice Bhuwan Goyal held, “Considering the aggravating and mitigating circumstances of the present case and in the light of the law laid down by the Apex court, in our view, this case does not fall within the category of ‘rarest of rare case’ and therefore, we commute the death penalty to that of life imprisonment, which shall extend to the full natural life of the appellant but subject to any remission or commutation at the instance of the government for good and sufficient reasons.”
The Bench relied upon the judgment of the Apex Court in the case of Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab (1980) 2 SCC 684 wherein it was held that life imprisonment is the Rule and Death Sentence is an exception. Advocate Mahendra Kumar appeared for the accused Suresh Kumar.  
G.A. Javed Choudhary appeared for the State, and Advocate Fahad Hasan appeared for the complainant.
A missing person report was filed by the father of the missing girl, a child aged about four and a half years, to the effect that the child went missing from Aguna Mohalla, Azad Chauk and the dead body of the missing child was recovered from a pond. It was found that she was raped and drowned in the pond. The Police sprang into action and on the basis of informer’s feedback, arrested the accused from the village.
The Court stated that the offence had been committed with a young girl of four-and-a-half-year-old and further observed that the mitigating circumstances in the present case were: the age of the accused was 23 years at the time of the alleged offence; the accused-appellant had a wife and a girl child of one year old at the time of the alleged incident; the accused did not have any criminal antecedents; the murder was not pre-meditated; his behaviour in custody was not uncomplimentary and so, it could not be said that he would be a menace to the society.