Supreme Court commutes a death sentence to life without remission, applying the rarest-of-rare test

In an appeal against a death sentence imposed for the sexual assault and killing of a minor child by her stepfather, punishable under Sections 302 and 376AB of the Indian Penal Code and Sections 5 and 6 of the POCSO Act, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the two-pronged test from the Constitution Bench decision in Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab for deciding whether a case falls within the 'rarest of rare' category warranting death. The 'crime test' asks whether the aggravating circumstances of the offence are so grave that society would demand the death penalty; the 'criminal test' asks whether, notwithstanding those circumstances, the possibility of the offender's reform and rehabilitation stands conclusively foreclosed, with the burden on the State to prove that it does.

After weighing aggravating factors, including the victim's age, the breach of a guardian's trust, and the concealment of the crime, against the mitigating circumstances on record, the Court held that the State had not established that the appellant's reformation was impossible, and that the case did not warrant execution. Applying the 'special category' sentence recognised in Union of India v. V. Sriharan, the Court commuted the death sentence to imprisonment for the remainder of the appellant's natural life, without the possibility of remission, while affirming the other sentences imposed under the IPC and the POCSO Act to run concurrently, applying Section 42 of the POCSO Act to select the more severe of the overlapping provisions.