Two years and five months after the Supreme Court awarded death penalty to a rapist-cum-murderer of a four-year-old girl in Maharashtra, a three judge Bench of the apex court, in review, has dismissed his petition demanding life sentence, after being convinced that the act was so “barbaric” that it deserved death.
A three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court reiterated the death sentence on the convict, Vasanta Sampat Dupare, who is currently 55-year-old. He was sentenced to the gallows on November 26, 2014 by the apex court following which he filed a review petition. This petition was listed in open court following the decision of the apex court to mandatorily list all death review petitions in open court.
The convict got a chance to present the court with all mitigating circumstances that could save him from death and commute his sentence to life term. But the bench of Justices Dipak Misra, Rohington F Nariman and UU lalit was not convinced. It said, “We find that the aggravating circumstances namely the extreme depravity and the barbaric manner in which the crime was committed and the fact that the victim was a helpless girl of four years clearly outweigh the mitigating circumstances now brought on record.”
Dupare was a neighbour to the victim and was a married man. He lured the victim with chocolates, raped her and stoned her to death with heavy stones. The crushing injuries sustained by the victim was gruesome as the stones used by her murderer weighed about 8.5 kg and 7.5 kg respectively.
For the convict, senior advocate Anup Bhambani argued that since the order by the SC sentencing him to the gallows, the petitioner had completed Bachelors Preparatory Programme offered by the Indira Gandhi National Open University enabling him to prepare for Bachelor level study. Besides, he also completed the Gandhi Vichar Pariksha and participated in drawing competition organised sometime in January 2016. In addition, the jail record of the convict was without any blemish. An effort was made to show that there is a “possibility of the accused being reformed and rehabilitated”.
The bench had a tough task weighing mercy against proportionate punishment for the crime. It was convinced that all aggravating and mitigating circumstances was discussed by the court in its November 2014 decision and later developments did not erase the brutality of the crime.