Double murder case: HC upholds life for 2

PANAJI: The high court of Bombay at Goa on Friday upheld the life imprisonment of two convicts, Osban Fernandes and Ramesh Bagve, for kidnapping and attempting to murder two minor children whose parents they had already murdered. The court, however, rejected the state’s government appeal to impose the death penalty.

The case pertains to 2013, when Fernandes and Bagve first murdered a man in Ribandar, and then, to cover it up, drove his wife and two children to Anmod ghat. There, they made the children witness the murder of their mother, and then attempted to kill her two children.
The minor girl had deposed in trial court that she witness Fernandes and Bagve murder her mother. Then ten years old, she said that after killing the woman, they strangulated her brother and tried to choke her. They then threw them both in a valley in the wee hours of May 14, 2013.
Declining the state’s plea to impose the death penalty, a division bench comprising justices MS Sonak and MS Jawalkar said this isn’t a matter that attracts the ‘rarest of rare’ principle, and noted that the death rap can only be imposed when life imprisonment appears to be an altogether inadequate punishment.
Public prosecutor S R Rivonkar had argued that this case qualifies as a ‘rarest of rare’ one since it’s one of the most heinous crimes committed in Goa. He also pointed out Fernandes’ and Bagve’s unusually cruel conduct in dealing with the parents of minors and the children themselves.
However, the court referred to a Supreme Court judgment which held that normally, capital punishment should not be imposed relying only upon the testimony of child witnesses, and an extreme sentence cannot seek its main support from evidence of this kind which, even if true, is not safe enough to act upon for putting out a life.
Rivonkar had told the court that the sentences imposed by the children’s court were too lenient, and that the crime shook the collective conscience of the community. He reminded the court that the two convicts also sexually assaulted the minor girl and threw her out of the car.
The ghastly incident came to light when Bonaventure D’Souza, the complainant, and Hassan Mulla, returning from Karnataka to Goa, saw the minor girl sitting at the side of the road at 5.30am. She then told him about what had happened, and he called the police.
The court complimented D’Souza and Mulla for discharging their civic duty with utmost sensitivity. The bench also observed that they both displayed courage and compassion, which is extremely commendable. “They were indeed good samaritans, who never shirked from their civic duty to render all possible assistance to the two children in extreme distress,” it said.