Court duty-bound to examine mitigating circumstances: SC

The Supreme Court last week observed that while handing out a death sentence, a court is duty-bound to examine the mitigating circumstances in favour of an accused even if the accused fails to come forward with them.

Setting aside a death sentence handed out by the Bombay High Court to Ajay Pandit alias Jagdish Patel in 2005, the court remitted the case back to the High Court to sentence Pandit according to norms laid down in the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC).

The High Court has been directed to consider the award of punishment afresh and take a decision wihtin six months.

"The state of mind of a person awaiting a death sentence and the state of mind of a person who has been awarded a life imprisonment sentence may not be the same mentally and psychologically. The court has got a duty and obligation to elicit relevant facts even if the accused has kept totally silent in such situations," the Supreme Court observed.

Observing that the High Court had made a "gross error" in following procedure, the apex court also said, "No genuine effort has been made by the court to elicit any information from the accused or from the prosecution as to whether any circumstances exist which might influence the court to avoid and to not award death sentence."

The court, however, upheld the conviction of Pandit who had, in 1994, murdered a man by inflicting brutal injuries with a sharp object and a woman who was given a drug overdose after receiving sums of money under the guise of sending them to the US for better prospects.

Both the victims hailed from Gujarat and Pandit had lured them by telling them that he had contacts in the American embassy.

While the trial court had handed out a life imprisonment sentence to Pandit, the High Court after taking into account the brutality with which 25-year-old Nilesh Patel was killed in a hotel room in Malabar Hill and the attempt to drug two others along with Jayashree Patel who died of an overdose in a Kemps Corner hotel, the High Court thought it fit to enhance the punishment.

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