New Delhi: Senior advocate and amicus curiae in the Nirbhaya rape and murder case Raju Ramachandran has submitted to the Supreme Court that the death sentence given to the four convicts violated the fundamental norms of sentencing and hence deserved to be struck down.
“Yes, we have made our submissions to the Supreme Court, but I cannot speak anything about it as I am currently involved in the case,” Ramachandran told News18.
The report also mentions that since a fair trial was denied to the accused, the death sentence violated Article 14 and Article 21 of the Constitution.
The 23-year-old paramedic was brutally gang-raped by six persons in a moving bus in south Delhi on the night of December 16, 2012, while returning home. She died later in a hospital in Singapore where the government had airlifted her amid raging protests across the national capital demanding justice.
K Parameshwar, who assisted Advocate Ramachandran in the amicus curiae report submitted to the SC bench of Justice Dipak Mishra, Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice Bhanumati on Friday, said Part I of the report highlighted the mitigating factors.
“After a conviction, before a sentencing is pronounced, the convict must be given a chance to state any mitigating factors which could help the court avoid imposition of the death sentence. The court itself in a lot of cases has said that mitigating factors like the socio-economic conditions of the accused, mental health, and other parameters could be highlighted by the accused before a sentencing is pronounced. But in this case, this step was clearly avoided,” Parameshwar told News18.
However, former Supreme Court Judge Justice Markandey Katju dismissed the amicus curiae report saying that there was no question of looking at mitigating factors in this case as the gravity of the crime demanded death penalty.
But Katju raised serious concerns with regard to the identification of the “real criminals”. “The police in many cases spread its net far and wide which often traps innocents along with the real culprit. We don’t know whether the accused in this case are the actual culprits and we believe only the police testimony. Unless the SC re-looks into this aspect of identification or transfers the case back to the HC, it would be unjust to impose death penalty at this juncture,” he said.
Parameshwar told News18 that Part II of the submission would be made to the SC bench on Friday. “It will revolve around how the courts failed to strike a proper balance between the aggravating and mitigating factors while pronouncing the death sentence,” said the assisting counsel.
Amicus curiae is an expert who is not a party to a case and is not solicited by a party, but who assists a court by offering information that is vital for the case to be decided in an unbiased manner. The decision on whether to admit the information lies at the discretion of the court.
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