The court determined that while the appellant committed brutal murders, the death penalty was not warranted due to mitigating circumstances and potential for reform, leading to a commutation to life imprisonment.

JUDGMENT :

SANJAY KAROL, J.

1. This is the third in an unfortunate line of cases that have travelled up to this Court in a recent past and have become ripe for adjudication where we find all sense of responsibility and propriety to have been given a go by, by the Appellant-convict. In this case, the seed of violence was the suspected infidelity of his wife Pakkeeramma¹[Hereinafter referred to as D1]. He suspected that his three-children namely Pavithra²[Hereinafter referred to as D3], Nagraj @Rajappa³[Hereinafter referred to as D4] and Basamma⁴[Hereinafter referred to as D5] born to D-1 were perhaps not his own.

2. Concurrently, the Appellant-convict has been held guilty of charges framed against him in FIR Cr. No. 23 of 2017 dated 26th February 2017 registered at PS Kampli, Ballari District, Karnataka – by the IIIrd Additional District and Sessions Judge⁵[Hereafter ‘Trial Court’], Ballari vide judgment dated 3rd December 2019 in Sessions Case No. 5031 of 2017 and by the High Court vide impugned judgment dated 30th May 2023 in Criminal Appeal No. 100170 of 2020 and Criminal Referred Case No. 100002 of 2020.

3. The facts of the appeals as have been culled out by the Courts below are that on 25th February 2017 the Appellant- convict assaulted D1, her sister Gangamma⁶[Hereinafter referred to as D2] and his children D3- D5 brutally, resulting in the death of D1 to D4 on the spot and D5 on the way to the hospital. Having done so, he stepped out of the house and apparently, proclaimed his satisfaction of having put an end to the life of his wife and sister-in-law who, according to him, was engaged in ‘immoral activities’ and also the children born to his wife which, as per him, were a direct consequence of such immoral activities. This statement was witnessed by as many as eight prosecution witnesses, namely, Shankaramma (CW-4); Bandi Basavaraja alias S. Basavaraj (CW-11); Thippeswamy (CW-30); V. Sathyappa (CW-32); K. Abdul Wahid (CW-35); Mehaboob (CW-36); Ragavendra (CW-37); Syed Mehaboob (CW-38); Nagappa (CW-39) and Athaulla (CW-40). Upon hearing such a statement, they rushed to the house of the Appellant-convict and found the abovenamed deceased persons lying there in pool of blood. D-5, at this time, was still alive and was accordingly taken to the Government Hospital, by CWs 35 and 36, where she died. CW-2 Marenna lodged a complaint with the police that his nieces, D-1 and D-2 as also D-1’s children had been killed by the Appellant-convict. The latter also went to the Kampili PS and admitted to having killed D-1 to D-5.⁷[Ex. 9(a) at Pg 170 of CC]] A First Information Report⁸[FIR No. 23/2017] was registered and forwarded to the Judicial Magistrate, First Class (Sr. Dn.) on the same day at 11:45 pm. The Appellant-convict was formally arrested at 5 a.m., the next morning.

4. After completion of the investigation, challan was presented for trial under Section 302 , INDIAN PENAL CODE , 1860⁹[Abbreviated as ‘IPC’]]. To establish its case, the prosecution examined 36 witnesses (although 66 were cited in the charge-sheet), marked 51 documents and 22 material objects, as exhibits. The Trial Court, having given its consideration to the evidence produced, concluded that the Appellant-convict had barbarically murdered his family members, D-1 to D-5 and had a ‘beast mind’. The order of sentencing dated 4th December 2019 reveals the consideration of two judgments of this Court, Khushwinder Singh v. State of Punjab , (2019) 4 SCC 415 and Ishwari Lal Yadav v. State of Chattisgarh , (2019) 10 SCC 423. In Khushwinder (supra) t