Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Jan 30: Principal Sessions Judge Reasi RN Wattal today awarded rigorous life-imprisonment to a militant namely Bashir Ahmed for killing surrendered militant Asgar Ali who was trainee at Police Training Centre Manigam at the time of murder.
As per the prosecution case, on 27/09/1999 a complaint was received at Police Station Mahore with the averments that a surrender militant Asgar Ali, son of Jamaldin of Gulab Garh, who was trainee at Police Training Centre Manigam and was on leave to meet his family members, was abducted from village Gulab Garh on 26th September 1999 and killed by unknown militants.
After hearing both the sides, the court observed, “the crime here is waging war against State and murder of an innocent person is particularly a heinous crime, a crime against state, a crime against humanity”.
“The penal statute has prescribed punishment for offence of waging war and 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 court to award a less sentence than minimum, adequate and special reasons decide the discretion”, the Principal Sessions Judge said, adding “the discretionary power cannot be used in discriminately 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 convict has huge family and he is the only bread earner of his family”, the court said, adding “as a young man, his mind has been polluted and has been misguided to wage war against State and indulge into subversive activities”.
“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 i.e. life imprisonment and death penalty. Death sentence can be imposed only on rarest of the rare case and case in hand does not fall in the category of rarest of rare case”, the Judge said and awarded to the convict life imprisonment for the commission of offence under Section 302 of RPC, an imprisonment of five years for commission of offence under Section 364 RPC and imprisonment of five years for the commission of offence under Section 3/25 Arms Act read with Section 201 RPC and 10 years for the commission of offence under Section 121-A of RPC.
“All the sentences shall run concurrently subject to the confirmation from the High Court”, the court said.
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