In a classic judgement that weighed the cry for justice of a six-year-old girl who had lost her mother, grandmother as well as great grandmother in a case of triple murder for gain alongside the future of three minor children of two convicts sentenced to death for the crime, the Madras High Court on Wednesday commuted their punishment to life sentence and ordered that they should not be let out of prison at any cost for 30 years.
Observing that the High Court takes the role of parens patriae of the families of death convicts as well as victims of crime while deciding such cases, a Division Bench of Justices P.N. Prakash and C.V. Karthikeyan directed the District Legal Services Authority (DLSA) at Vellore and Namakkal to send their team of advocates to ensure that the children of the convicts were educated in schools without disclosing their background.
The DLSA was also asked to assist the wives of the two convicts in eking out a livelihood. The judges hoped that the positive initiatives taken by the court would propel the convicts, who had been sentenced to life in another triple murder case too, to reform themselves. It was also made clear that the duo should be lodged in different prisons for the rest of the term so that they could reflect in solitude over their actions.
The present case relates to the murder of B. Sindhu, a doctor by profession, her mother T. Sathyavathi and grandmother Visalakshi. The convicts slit the victims’ throats at their residence in Mullai Nagar in Namakkal on October 13, 2011, before decamping with 28 sovereigns of gold jewellery worn by them. The two convicts were also sentenced to life in a similar case of triple murder for gain that took place in Karur district in 2011.
Stating that a court of law could not shut its eyes to the plight of the families of the convicts as well as victims of crime, the judges said: “This court functions under the power and right given by the citizens of this country while hearing a criminal appeal to examine the evidence presented before it and also to examine where the family of the accused and the victim would be placed.
Viewed from that angle, when there are three young children who have a long future and who have to enter into school and gain education, the question we ask ourselves is whether we are over burdening ourselves by examining whether in the school records of the three children, when a question is asked about their father, would it leave an indelible mark in the minds of the three future citizens that their father had been executed by the orders of the court?
“We must keep in our mind that this court must also ensure that these three children, when they grow up and enter into the society, do not have any anger or any reason to wreak vengeance in any manner whatsoever... To young minds, words of robbery, murder and death sentence are meaningless. All they would know is that the Government or the judiciary, through the Government, was responsible for the death of their fathers.
“To this extent, we feel that it would only be appropriate that an alternative to death sentence can be imposed.”