IMPORTANT POINT
The mental condition or state of mind of the accused is one of the factors that can be taken into account in considering the question of sentence.

JUDGMENT

A. K. Patnaik, J.

This is an appeal by way of special leave under Article 136 of the Constitution of India against the judgment and order dated 16.07.2009 of the Patna High Court in Death Reference No. 7 of 2008 with Criminal Appeal (DB) No.169 of 2008. On 18.01.2010, this Court issued notice in the Special Leave Petition confined to the question of sentence only and on 02.08.2010 after hearing learned counsel for the parties, granted leave. Hence, the only question that we have to decide in this appeal is whether the High Court was right in confirming the death sentence of the appellant imposed by the trial court.

2. For deciding this question, the relevant facts as have been found by the trial court are that in the midnight of 14/15.02.2007, the appellant killed his mother by cutting her neck and severing her head and thereafter fled from the house with the head of his mother leaving behind her body. The trial court, after convicting the appellant under Sections 302 and 201 of the Indian Penal Code (for short ‘IPC’), held that the appellant committed the murder of his mother in an extremely brutal, grotesque, diabolical and revolting manner and hence it is one of those rarest of the rare cases calling for a death sentence on the appellant. The High Court, while upholding the conviction, confirmed the death sentence relying on the decision of this Court in Machhi Singh and others v. State of Punjab1 [(1983) 3 SCC 470]. In the aforesaid case of Machhi Singh, this Court has inter alia held that the manner of commission of murder and the personality of the victim of murder have to be taken into consideration while making the choice of the sentence to be imposed for the offence under Section 302, IPC : life imprisonment or death sentence. The High Court has taken a view that considering the abhorrent, dastardly and diabolical nature of the crime committed by the appellant on none other than his mother, who had given birth to him, the penalty of death has been rightly awarded by the trial court.

3. At the hearing of this appeal, learned counsel for the appellant, relying on the decision of this Court in Swamy Shraddananda (2) alias Murali Manohar Mishra v. State of Karnataka2 [(2008) 13 SCC 767], submitted that even if it is a case of a son beheading his mother, this is not one of the rarest of rare cases in which the death penalty should have been imposed because the offence had been committed by the appellant in a fit of passion and not after pre-meditation.

4. Learned counsel for the State, on the other hand, submitted that considering the law laid down by this Court in Prajeet Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar3 [(2008) 4 SCC 434], Surja Ram v. State of Rajasthan4 [(1996) 6 SCC 271] and Atbir v. Government of NCT of Delhi5 [(2010) 9 SCC 1], the imposition of death sentence on the appellant for the cruel act of beheading his mother was proper.

5. We find on reading the FIR lodged by the brother of the appellant on the morning of 15.02.2007 at 09:45 hours marked as Ext.2 that the appellant’s wife Sakerun Nisha had run away to her maternal house three or four days before the incident and the appellant had been accusing his mother to have been the cause of his wife running away from this house and out of anger and excitement the appellant severed the neck of his mother and fled with the head. The appellant was an illiterate rustic and was a cultivator residing in a village with virtually no control over his emotions and has over-reacted impulsively to the situation and has severed the neck of his mother. On these facts, the appellant is no doubt guilty of the offence under Section 302, IPC, and has to suffer the punishment of imprisonment for life normally awarded for the offence, but should not be condemned to death. We may cite a few authorities in support of this view.

6. In Lehna v. State of Haryana6 [(2002) 3 SCC 76], the facts were that there was a quarrel between the accused and other members of his family, namely, his