Supreme Court upholds life term for murder but asks Karnataka governor to consider remission plea | India News
NEW DELHI: The ‘honeymoon murder’ executed by a woman with the help of her lover in Meghalaya last month appears to be a re-enactment of a 2003 murder case in which the Supreme Court has upheld life sentence to the woman and her accomplices, including her lover, but analysed what drives women to commit such heartless crimes.In the case in hand, the 20-year-old woman, a third year law student at a Bengaluru college, was in love with her classmate but her parents, unaware of her secret liaison, got her engaged on November 30, 2003, to a family friend’s software engineer son.Two days after the engagement, she told her future husband to take her out for dinner. After dinner, she insisted on stopping at ‘Air View Point’, located on Airport Ring Road, to watch the landing of aeroplanes. She had been constantly messaging her lover and his accomplices about their location, as did Sonam Raghuvanshi in her alleged sinister plan. The assailants came with an iron rod and assaulted the software engineer on the head from behind. The man died of head injuries. Though a bench of Justices M M Sundresh and Arvind Kumar upheld the life sentence awarded to her and her accomplices, it felt that young lives should not be wasted altogether and allowed them to seek pardon from the Karnataka governor.Writing the judgment, Justice Sundresh said, “this unfortunate event would not have occurred had the family been more sympathetic in understanding the mental predilection and disposition of the woman.”All three convicts, who were barely out of their teens, have reached middle age now and the court felt that they deserved a new lease of life. Finding that there had been no adverse remarks against them during their more than two-decade-long incarceration, the bench said, “They were not born criminals, it was an error of judgment through a dangerous adventure which led to the commission of a heinous crime. It is difficult for us to decide at this stage who influenced the other, although there is a clear meeting of minds.“The court said, “We would like to facilitate the appellants’ right to seek pardon by permitting them to file appropriate petitions before the governor of Karnataka. We would only request the constitutional authority to consider the same, which we hope and trust would be done by taking note of the relevant circumstances governing the case.”Discussing the societal pressure and circumstances that compel women to commit crimes, Justice Sundresh said, “A woman is pushed into a dark corner by external elements that contribute substantially to the inequalities in her life. Thoughts of a woman would differ based on the place, person and group that she interacts with. It is the social norms and values which determine an action on her part, that is nothing but a form of her expression.“
