Judgment :-

K.S. Radhakrishnan, J.

1. Appellants, herein, were awarded death sentence by the trial court after having found them guilty under Sections 395, 396 and 397 of Indian Penal Code (for short ‘IPC’). They were sentenced to death by hanging under subsection 5 of Section 354 of Criminal Procedure Code for offences committed under Section 396 IPC. The trial court after noticing that, the accused persons came from a State about 2000 k.m. away from Tamil Nadu, held as follows:

“In this case, the accused came from a state about 2000 k.m. from our state and they did not think that the victims were also human like them but they thought only about the well being of their family and their own life and committed the fear of death amongst the common public of our state by committing robbery and murder for about 11 years. Therefore, this court is of the opinion that the death sentence that would be imposed on them would create a fear amongst the criminals who commit such crime and further this case is a rarest of rare case that calls for the imposition of death sentence.”

2. We have noticed that the trial Court, among other grounds, was also influenced by a speech made by the then Chief Jus