President Ram Nath Kovind rejected the first ever mercy plea placed before him from murder convict Jagat Rai, who along with two others, was convicted for the murder of a man, his wife, and their five minor children by burning them alive while they were sleeping in their house.
As is the norm for a mercy plea to the President, the case was placed before President Kovind after the Supreme Court rejected the convict's plea for mercy five years back.
A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, headed by the then Chief Justice of India HL Dattu, Justice Sudhansu Jyoti Mukhopadhaya, and Justice M Y Eqbal, while sentencing Jagat Rai and one other accused, Deepak Rai, to death, observed:
The crime, enormous in proportion having wiped off the whole family, is committed so brutally that it pricks and shocks not only the judicial conscience but even the collective conscience of the society. It demands just punishment from the Court and the Court is bound to respond within legal parameters.Excerpt from the order of the Supreme Court in 2013
According to the prosecution in the case, the motive for the murder was revenge for an FIR filed against the convicts, by the man (whose family was killed), for alleged buffalo theft.
They are a perfect example of blood-thirsty, scheming and hardened criminals who slayed seven innocent lives to quench their thirst for revenge and such revenge evolving out of a fellow citizens’ refusal to abstain from resorting to machinery of law to protect his rights.Excerpt from the order of the Supreme Court in 2013
The court had added that the brutal and shocking nature of the incident had shocked the collective conscience of the community, and that the heinous nature of the crime far outweighs the mitigating circumstances, placing the crime within the ambit of the “rarest of rare.”
They do not deserve any mercy and they deserve death sentence.Excerpt from the order of the Supreme Court in 2013
The court had also commuted the sentence of the third accused to life imprisonment, stating that:
The truth is that some crimes are so outrageous that society insists on adequate punishment, because the wrong doer deserves it, irrespective of whether it is a deterrent or not.Excerpt from the order of the Supreme Court in 2013
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)