Judgment

KRISHNA IYER, J. (for himself and on behalf of Desai J. - Majority view):- THE DEADLY QUANDARY: To be or not to be: that is the question of lethal import and legal moment, in each of these three appeals where leave is confined to the issue of the propriety of the impost of capital penalty against which the brutal culprits desparately beseech that their dear life be spared by the Summit Court and the incarceratory alternative be awarded instead. There is, as here, a judicial dimension to the quasi-Hamletian dilemma when "a murder most foul" demands of sentencing justice punitive infliction of death or the lesser punishment of life imprisonment, since the Penal Code leaves the critical choice between physical liquidation and life-long incarceration to the enlightened conscience and sensitized judgment of the Court.

2. A narration of facts is normally necessary at this early stage but we relegate it to a later part, assuming for the none the monstrosity of the murder in each case. Is mere shock at the horrendous killing sufficient alibi to extinguish one more life, de hors circumstances, individual an social, motivational and psychical? The crime and the criminal, contemporary