Sentencing Santosh Kumar Singh to death, the Delhi HC today relied on two Supreme Court judgements which crystallised the law on capital punishments. The first was the Bachan Singh case of 1980 in which the SC for the first time said that death penalty should be invoked only in the rarest of rare case. Then came the case of Machhi Singh, an officer of the Punjab Home Guards, in which the court further refined the rarest of rare category rule.

Bachan Singh was convicted and sentenced to death by the Sessions Court at Ferozepur for murdering three children of his cousin Hukam Singh in July 1977. The incident happened when Bachan Singh was living with Hukam Singh after serving life imprisonment for murdering his wife. Hukam Singh's wife was opposed to this. Angered by this, Bachan Singh chose a day when his cousin and wife were away to vent his anger on their children.

The Punjab and Haryana HC dismissed his appeal in August 1978. He then approached the SC, which found that it involved a larger question of law and referred it to a five judge Constitution Bench. Four of the Judges -- Chief Justice YV Chandrachud and Justices AC Gupta, NL Untwalia and RS Sarkaria -- upheld the constitutional validity of death penalty.

The majority decision said death penalty should be awarded only in cases that fall in the rarest of rare category. It also laid down certain guidelines to be followed while giving death. (a) The court can depart from the general rule of awarding life imprisonment and sentence a convict to death only if special reasons exist. Such reasons must be recorded in writing before imposing the death sentence. (b) While considering the question of sentence, the court must have regard to every relevant circumstance relating to the crime and criminal. If the offence is of an exceptionally depraved and heinous character and constitutes, on account of its design and the manner of its execution, a source of grave danger to the society at large, the court may impose the death sentence.

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