Srirangan v. State of Tamil Nadu

KRISHNA IYER, J.-A toddy tapper, young in age and a mental case, returning after a day-long toil with his tool, the sickle, and tense in state, was provoked by some trivias and went into tantrums and inflicted triple killings, all in one sombre sunset. Th;s bleeding tragedy Jed to prosecution and conviction, appeal and contlnnation, the unim-peachable offence being murder. The defence of insanity tested by the hoary rule in McNaghten's case,. codified in the Indian Penal Code over hundred years ago, was rightly dismissed, the testimony of de-mentia falling far short of the prescription in section 84 I.P.C. We have discovered no error in the factual finding and must therefore con-firm the conviction. Indeed, leave itself was granted confined to the question of sentence.

SRIRANGAN v. TAMIL NADU (Krishna Iyer, !.) 271 The trial Judge, whose horror at the multiple homicide unsheathed the terror of death penalty, decreed capital sentence on the culprit, and the High Court, deeply disturbed by "the brutal triple murder", set its seal of approval on guilt and punishment.

In the agonisingly sensitive area of sentencing, especially in the -choice between life term and death penalty, a wide spectrum of cir-cumstances attracts judicial attention, since they are all inarticulately implied in the penological part of s. 302 1.P.C. read with s. 354(3) 'Cr. P.C. The plurality of factors bearing on the crime and the doer of the crime must carefully enter the judicial verdict. The winds of penological reform notwithstanding, the prescription in s. 302 binds and death penalty is still permissible in the punitive pharmacopoeia of India. Even so, the current of precedents and the relevant catena of clement facts, personal, social and other, persuade us to hold that, even as in Nanu Ram v. State of Assam (A.LR. 1975 S.C. 762), the lesser penalty of life imprisonment will be a more appropriate punish-ment here.

We set aside the death sentence and award imprisonment for life io the appellant under s. 302 l.P.C. The appeal is disposed of .accordingly.

Sentence reduced.

CRIMINAL APPELLATE JURISDICTION : Criminal Appeal No. 470 of 1977.

Appeal by Special Leave from the Judgment and Order dated 20-4-1976 of the Madras High Court in Criminal Appeal No. 708/75· and Referred Trial No. 39175.

V. Mayakrishnan, amicus curiae for the Appellant.

A. V. Rangam for the Respondent.