Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, May 9: Principal Sessions Judge Reasi R N Wattal today awarded life-imprisonment to one Kuldeep Singh for killing his wife and 10 years old child.
According to the prosecution case, on 07.03.2010 Police Station Mahore received information from reliable sources that corpus of one Shiv Devi, wife of Kuldip Singh of Chassana was lying on the road leading from Shikari to Thuroo in the Dubri forest and at a short distance the corpus of Sachin and weapon of offence were also found.
Accordingly, case was registered and during the investigation it came to fore that the accused was married 13 to 14 years back with deceased Shiv Devi, daughter of Kamal Singh of Mahore. Out of this wedlock one male and female child were born. The accused, who was working at Kangra Himachal Pardesh, used to quarrel with Shiv Devi as he was suspecting that his wife was having illicit relationship.
Due to strained relations Shiv Devi was living with her parents at Bathoi and on the fateful day the accused called his wife to Dabri forest and then administered some drug to his wife and son thereby rendering them unconscious. Later, he killed his wife and son. After completion of investigation, charge sheet was presented before Munsiff (JMIC), Mahore, who committed the same to Principal Sessions Judge Reasi for judicial determination.
After hearing PP Ranjeev Kumar and APP Ashwani Kumar for the police whereas Advocate AK Shan for the accused person, Principal Sessions Judge Reasi R N Wattal observed, “while awarding sentence, the court should take recourse to principle of deterrence, or reform or invoke the doctrine of proportionality”.
“Taking recourse to either of these principles depends upon facts and circumstances of each case. The nature of the offence committed by the accused plays an important role in awarding the punishment. One of the principles that judiciary has to kept in mind is that murder of spouses and children should be severely punished so that same may be deterrent in the society”, court said, adding “the penal statute has prescribed punishment for offence of murder for life or capital punishment and to view such offences once proved lightly is itself an afferent to humanity”.
“Though there is discretion to the court to award a less sentence than minimum, adequate and special reasons decide the discretion. The discretionary power cannot be used indiscriminately or routinely. Same has to be used sparingly in cases where special facts and circumstances justify a reduction. The justifiable reason given by the accused for reduction in sentence or pardon him is that the convict is a young man and has family to be maintained by him”, Judge observed, adding “the convict is not a professional criminal and there is no criminal history in his past and no ground has been put forth before me, which would warrant imposing extreme penalty on the convict”.
“There are only two types of punishment for offence under Section 302 RPC—life imprisonment or death penalty. Death sentence can be imposed only on the rarest of the rare case and case in hand does not fall in the category of rarest of rare case. The convict, is as such, sentenced to undergo life imprisonment for the commission of offence under Section 302 of RPC and imprisonment of two years for the commission of offence under Section 4/25 Arms Act”, the court said.
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