Judgment

O. CHINNAPPA REDDY, J. :- "The murderer has killed. It is wrong to kill. Let us kill the murderer." That was how a Mr. Bonsell of Manchester (quoted by Arthur Koestler in his Drinkers of Infinity), in a letter to the Press, neatly summed up the paradox and the pathology of the Death Penalty. The unsoundness of the rationale of the demand of death for murder has been discussed and exposed by my brother Krishna Iyer, J., in a recent pronouncement in Rajendra Prasad v. State of Uttar Pradesh, Criminal Appeal No. 512 of 1978, D/- 9-2-1979 : (reported in AIR 1979 SC 916) I would like to add an appendix to what has been said there.

2. The dilemma of the Judge in every murder case, "Death or life imprisonment for the murderer?" is the question with which we are faced in this appeal. The very nature of the penalty of death appears to make it imperative that at every suitable opportunity life imprisonment should be preferred to the death penalty. "The penalty of death differs from all other forms of criminal punishment, not in degree but in kind. It is unique in its total irrevocability. It is unique in its rejection of rehabilitation of the convict as a basic purpose of criminal jus