Judgment

THAKKAR, J.:- Protagonists of the "an eye for an eye" philosophy demand "death-for death". The Humanists on the other. hand press for the other extreme viz., "death in-no-case". A synthesis has emerged in Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab, (1980) 2 SCC 684 wherein the "rarest-of-rare-cases" formula for imposing death sentence in a murder case has been evolved by this Court. Identification of the guidelines spelled out in Bachan Singh in order to determine whether or not death sentence should be imposed is one of the problems engaging our attention, to which we will address ourselves in due course.

2. A feud between two families has resulted in tragic consequences. Seventeen lives were lost in the course of a series of five incidents which occurred in quick succession in five different villages, situated in the vicinity of each other in Punjab, on a night one would like to forget but cannot forget, the night between August 12 and August 13, 1977. The seventeen persons who lost their lives and the three who sustained injuries included men, women and children related to one Amar Singh and his sister Piaro Bai.

3. In this connection one Machhi Singh and his eleven companions, close