NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday acquitted a death-row convict in the 2014 rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl in Uttarakhand, known as the ‘Little Nirbhaya’ case, emphasizing that courts must exercise the highest degree of caution before imposing the death penalty.
A bench comprising Justices Vikram Nath, Sanjay Karol, and Sandeep Mehta overturned the convictions and sentences handed down by the trial court and the Uttarakhand High Court, including the death penalty for one accused and a seven-year jail term for another, who was also acquitted.
The Court highlighted significant loopholes in the investigation and ruled that the prosecution failed to prove the charges beyond reasonable doubt, as the case was based solely on circumstantial evidence. “We are of the opinion that the prosecution has failed to establish a complete and unbroken chain of circumstances necessary to establish the guilt of the accused-appellants,” the judgment stated.
Justice Mehta, who authored the verdict, underscored the need for utmost caution in capital punishment cases. “The irreversible nature of capital punishment demands it be imposed only in the ‘rarest of rare’ cases. Even the slightest doubt or infirmity in the prosecution’s case must weigh against imposing such a sentence. Any hasty or mechanical application of the death penalty, without ensuring the highest standards of proof and procedural fairness, undermines the rule of law and risks the gravest miscarriage of justice by extinguishing a human life irretrievably,” he said.
