Quantum of Punishment u/s 302 IPC Navas @ Mulanavas v. State of Kerala

SUPREME  COURT  RULING:

·       “Imprisonment for life” may
mean anything from imprisonment for a specific term of say 20 years, 25 years,
30 years etc. or imprisonment till the end of natural life.

·       In this case the Supreme
Court ordered “25 years imprisonment without remission” for the offence of murder
punishable u/s 302 IPC.

Delhi Law Academy Jaipur presents below for
aspirants of Rajasthan Judicial Service (RJS), DJS, PCS (J) and other Judicial
Services throughout India a very important judgment of the Supreme Court of
India on the quantum of punishment u/s 302 IPC for the offence of murder.

Presented below: Summarized
version [by Delhi Law Academy Jaipur] of the Supreme Court Judgment in the
case of Navas @ Mulanavas  v. 
State of Kerala  [2024 INSC 215].

***Original
language of the judgment has been maintained; without any substitution or
replacement.***

This
judgment running in 65 pages has been summarized in just about 4 pages by Delhi
Law Academy while retaining the original language and necessary content.

**J U D G M E N T**

2\. The trial Court found the appellant (the sole
accused) guilty for the offences punishable under Sections 302 and 449 IPC for
having committed the murder of Latha (aged 39 years), Ramachandran (aged 45
years), Chitra (aged 11 years) and Karthiayani Amma (aged 80 years) after
committing house-trespass. After committing the above said act, the accused
attempted to commit suicide for which he was also found guilty under Section
309 IPC. The trial Court sentenced the accused to death for the offence
punishable under Section 302 IPC.

3\. When the matter went for confirmation before the
High Court, the High Court, while confirming the conviction, modified the
sentence. The sentence of death was modified and reduced to imprisonment for
life with a further direction that the accused shall not be released from
prison for a period of 30 (thirty) years including the period already undergone
with set off under Section 428 Cr.P.C. alone. Aggrieved, the appellant is
before us in the present appeal by way of special leave.

17\. The question before us is what should be the
appropriate sentence and whether the High Court was justified in adopting the
Swamy Shraddananda v. State of Karnataka, (2008) 13 SCC 767 line of cases and
even it was justified whether the fixing of the quantum at 30 years without
remission was the appropriate sentence, in the facts and circumstances of the
case?

24\. Swamy Shraddananda, since affirmed subsequently
in Union of India v. V. Sriharan alias Murugan and Others, (2016) 7 SCC 1,
resolved a judge’s dilemma. Often it happens that a case that falls short of
the rarest of the rare category may also be one where a mere sentence of 14
years (the normal benchmark for life imprisonment) may be grossly
disproportionate and inadequate. The Court may find that while death penalty may
not be warranted keeping in mind the overall circumstances, a proportionate
penalty would be to fix the period between 14 years and for the imprisonment
till rest of the life without remission.

25\. In V. Sriharan, a Constitution Bench of this
Court affirmed the principle laid down in Swamy Shraddananda. It first affirmed
the principle that imprisonment for life meant imprisonment for rest of the
life, subject however, to the right to claim remission, as provided in the
Constitution and the statutes. It was further held that the judgment in Swamy
Shraddananda did not violate any statutory prescription. The Court went on to
observe that all that Swamy Shraddananda sought to declare was that within the
prescribed limit of the punishment of life imprisonment, having regard to the
nature of offence committed by imposing life imprisonment for a specified
period would be proportionate to the crime as well as the interest of the
victim.

27\. How much is too much and how much is too little?
This is the difficult area we have tried to address here. As rightly observed,
there can be no straitjacket formulae. Pegging the point up to which remission
powers cannot be invoked
is an exercise that has to be carefully undertaken and the discretion should
be exercised on reasonable grounds. The spectrum is very large. The principle in
Swamy Shraddananda as affirmed in V. Sriharan was evolved as the normally
accepted norm of 14 years was found to be grossly disproportionate on the lower
side. At
the same time, since it is a matter concerning the liberty of the individual,
courts should also guard against any disproportion in the imposition, on the
higher side too. A delicate balance has to be struck.

55\. A survey of the 27 cases discussed above
indicates that while in five cases, the maximum of imprisonment till the rest
of the life is given; in nine cases, the period of imprisonment without
remission was 30 years; in six cases, the period was 20 years (In Ramraj this
Court had imposed a sentence of 20 years including remission); in four cases,
it was 25 years; in another set of two cases, it was 35 years and in one case,
it was 21 years.

57\. A journey through the cases set out hereinabove
shows that the fundamental underpinning is the principle of proportionality. The
aggravating and mitigating circumstances which the Court considers while
deciding commutation of penalty from death to life imprisonment have a large
bearing in deciding the number of years of compulsory imprisonment without
remission, too. As a judicially trained mind pores and ponders over the
aggravating and mitigating circumstances and in cases where they decide to
commute the death penalty they would by then have a reasonable idea as to what
would be the appropriate period of sentence to be imposed under the Swamy
Shraddananda principle too. Matters are not cut and dried and nicely weighed
here to formulate a uniform principle. That is where the experience of the
judicially trained mind comes in as pointed out in V. Sriharan.

Illustratively in the process of arriving at the
number of years as the most appropriate for the case at hand, which the convict
will have to undergo before which the remission powers could be invoked, some
of the relevant factors that the courts bear in mind are:-

(a)
the number of deceased who are victims of that crime and their age and gender;

(b)
the nature of injuries including sexual assault if any;

(c)
the motive for which the offence was committed;

(d)
whether the offence was committed when the convict was on bail in another case;

(e)
the premeditated nature of the offence;

(f)
the relationship between the offender and the victim;

(g)
the abuse of trust if any;

(h)
the criminal antecedents; and whether the convict, if released, would be a
menace to the society.

Some of the positive factors have been, (1) age of
the convict; (2) the probability of reformation of convict; (3) the convict not being a
professional killer; (4) the socio-economic condition of the accused; (5) the
composition of the family of the accused and (6) conduct expressing remorse.

60\. For the reasons stated above, we uphold the
judgment of the High Court insofar as the conviction of the appellant under
Sections 302, 449 and 309 IPC is concerned. We also do not interfere with the
sentence imposed on the accused for the offence under Section 449 and Section
309 of IPC. We hold that the High Court was justified on the facts of the
case in following Swamy Shraddananda principle while imposing sentence for the
offence under Section 302 IPC. However, in view of the discussion made
above, we are inclined to modify the sentence under Section 302 imposed by the
High Court from a period of 30 years imprisonment without remission to that of
a period of 25 years imprisonment without remission, including the period
already undergone. In our view, this would serve the ends of justice.

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