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Punishment should be proportionate to the gravity of the offence

Apex Court Says Sentence Must Reflect Gravity Of Offence

By Dhananjay Mahapatra, The Times of India, 2013/04/25

The Times of India

Punish convicts for the crime as well as its brutality: SC

New Delhi: The increased brutality in committing crimes, including gang rapes in the recent past, has not been lost on the Supreme Court, which has promised to society that the accused if convicted would get adequately punished not only for the crime but also for their depravity.

It said all trial courts, while awarding punishment to a convict, must follow the cardinal principle of sentencing policy which mandated “the sentence imposed on an offender should reflect the crime he has committed and it should be proportionate to the gravity of the offence”.

“The court must not only keep in view the rights of the victim of the crime but also society at large while considering the imposition of appropriate punishment,” said a bench of Justices P Sathasivam, M Y Eqbal and Arjan K Sikri.

Setting aside a lenient sentence awarded by the Punjab & Haryana high court in an attempt to murder case, the bench said: “The punishment awarded should be directly proportionate to the nature and the magnitude of the offence.”

It said the discretion vested in the judiciary by the legislature for determining appropriate sentence has put the onus on judges to exercise care and caution and arrive at a fair and impartial verdict. It said the sentence would either be reformative or coercive depending on the facts and circumstances of cases. Writing the judgment for the bench, Justice Sathasivam said, “The facts and given circumstances in each case, the nature of the crime, the manner in which it was planned and committed, the motive for commission of the crime, the conduct of the accused, the nature of weapons used and all other attending circumstances are relevant facts which would enter into the area of consideration.”

Though the bench said the trial courts must took into account the manner in which the crime was planned and committed as an attendant circumstance for determining the sentence, it stressed that “undue sympathy” should never creep into the mind of a Judge while determining the quantum of punishment.

The bench said, “Undue sympathy to impose inadequate sentence would do more harm to the justice system to undermine the public confidence in the efficacy of law. It is the duty of every court to award proper sentence having regard to the nature of the offence and the manner in which it was executed or committed.”