The Hon’ble Supreme Court of India commutated the sentence of death penalty to life imprisonment for the Wipro BPO employee rape – murder case of 2007. The two men had been convicted and awarded death penalty by the State High court and the Supreme court previously. The convicts had raped and murdered a 22-years’ old woman, who was a Wipro company’s employee in the BPO sector. On November 1, 2007, the victim took the regular cab that had been in a contract with the employer Wipro, in a suburb of Pune, in order to report for her night duty.
The two convicts Purushottam Borate and Pradeep Kokade, the cab driver and his friend respectively, abducted the woman by changing the route and forcefully took the young woman to a remote area in the cab where they gang raped her, murdered her by strangulation with her ‘dupatta’, and also disfigured her face in the end.
The Judiciary and the Executive directed for prompt disposal of such cases
A bench of Justice Abhay Oka, Justice Ahsanuddin Amanullah, and Justice Augustine George Masih, pronounced some important legal principles that must be followed by the judiciary and the executive in the cases relating to death penalty convicts and mercy petitions. The court expressed its view that the protection provided by the constitutional rights under Article 21, in the case of an inordinate delay in the execution of the death penalty can cause infringement to the laws of natural justice that protects such rights of the convicts too.
Earlier Bombay High Court had commuted the death penalty sentence to life imprisonment of 35 years, that had been challenged again by the State of Maharashtra, for staying the death penalty. The Supreme Court of India dismissed the appeals made by the State of Maharashtra and upheld the judgement of the Bombay High Court.
The court said that unexplainable and prolonged delay for the consideration of mercy petitions by the Governor and the President of India can create ‘adverse physical conditions and psychological stress on the convict’. The appellate court also added that the effect of unjustifiable delay by the executive and the law enforcing agencies can be completely dehumanizing on the person that has been sentenced to death.
Supreme Court of India issues guidelines on execution of death penalty and mercy petitions
The Hon’ble Supreme Court gave directions to all the States and Union Territories in India to constitute a dedicated cell for prompt execution of death penalty cases or mercy petitions within the time frame chalked out by respective governments in order to prevent delay in the future. The Supreme Court also criticized, pointed out and raised questions about the numerous lapses, and delays in this case.
