India | Father who raped and murdered 6-year-old daughter spared death penalty

The direction came as the bench of Justice Gurvinder Singh Gill and Justice Jasjit Singh Bedi held that the case did not fall within the ‘rarest of rare’ category warranting capital punishment

A father, who raped and murdered his six-year-old daughter, has escaped the gallows after the Punjab and Haryana High Court commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment for the “remainder of his natural life” without remissions. The direction came as the bench of Justice Gurvinder Singh Gill and Justice Jasjit Singh Bedi held that the case did not fall within the ‘rarest of rare’ category warranting capital punishment.

The bench upheld Amritsar District and Sessions Judge’s conviction under Section 302 of the IPC and Section 6 of the POCSO Act, but modified the sentence. “While there is no doubt about the brutal and heinous nature of the crime committed by the accused, who is none other than the father of the deceased, the fact remains that he has no criminal antecedents, hails from a poor socio-economic background, and his conduct inside the jail has been satisfactory. Further, at the time of the crime, he was of the age of 35 years. Therefore, the instant case cannot be said to be falling in the category of ‘rarest of rare cases’ in which there is no alternative but to impose the death sentence,” the bench held.

The prosecution’s case was that the accused took his minor daughter away from her mother on the evening of January 4, 2020. The next morning, she was found raped, strangled, and hanging from a tree in an apparent attempt to mislead the investigation. The high court observed, “Once it has been established beyond doubt that the accused was seen in the company of the deceased having taken her from her mother the previous evening, the burden lay on him to explain as to how she came to be raped and murdered in terms of the Evidence Act. He has not been able to discharge the said burden, not having furnished any explanation either in his statement (before the court) under Section 313 of the CrPC or by way of leading any evidence in defence.”

The bench concluded that the prosecution had clearly and categorically established an unbroken chain of circumstantial evidence proving his guilt. The judgment stated: “It is apparent that the prosecution has been able to clearly, cogently, and categorically establish that the chain of circumstantial evidence is complete so as to leave no doubt whatsoever that the deceased, aged six, who was none other than the daughter of the accused, had been taken away by him on the evening of January 4, 2020, between 3 and 4 pm. She was found raped and murdered the next morning and the accused has not been able to furnish any explanation whatsoever as to what had transpired with his deceased daughter after he had taken her away with him.”

Source: tribuneindia.com, Staff, April 3, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde