When the gatekeepers of justice failed

It’s not often that the Supreme Court lets convicts on death row walk free. Commuting of capital punishment is fairly common, but acquittal is rare. And rarer still is eight death-row convicts getting exonerated in one day in two different cases: six in one and two in the other. Tuesday might well have been the rarest of rare days in the annals of the Supreme Court.

The first case involved the murder of five and the rape of a woman and her daughter in Maharashtra. Of the six members of a nomadic tribe awarded capital punishment, five have been rotting in jail for 16 years. The sixth one turned out to be a juvenile. Their exoneration is also a commentary on the state of the criminal justice system, where built-in systems of checks and balances had failed to deliver so miserably.

While the trial court initially awarded death penalty to all six, the High Court—which is tasked with confirming the verdict—made it three life and three death sentences, though all six faced the same charges. And an SC Bench restored capital punishment to all six 10 years ago. Apparently, all the gatekeepers went about their job mechanically, without looking at the quality of proof, since death penalty is awarded only in the rarest of rare cases.

Luck finally smiled on the accused as the top court agreed to reopen their case. In its verdict on Tuesday, the SC slammed the sloppy investigation and sought departmental action against the erring cops. The second case, involving death penalty to two accused in Chhattisgarh, too fell apart because of want of proper probe.

In the first case, the SC ordered the Maharashtra government to pay `5 lakh each as relief to all the six accused. The amount is a pittance for the 16 years they lost in captivity. The government also must help rehabilitate them. Had the eight been executed before their cases were reopened, it would have rankled India’s judicial conscience. One shudders to think if there are similar cases of miscarriage of justice. It’s perhaps time to revisit the idea of sending convicts to the gallows as well.