Rajasthan High Court Commutes Nine Death Sentences, Acquits Two in Eleven Pending References

In a significant development, the Rajasthan High Court at Jodhpur has disposed of all pending death-sentence references before it. Out of 11 references, the court commuted the death penalty in nine cases and acquitted the accused in two. Most of these cases involved the rape and murder of minors, and the batch included references filed between 2021 and 2025.

A docket spanning years

A division bench of Justice Vinit Kumar Mathur and Justice Anuroop Singhi delivered the first of these verdicts on October 3, 2025, in State of Rajasthan v Arjun Singh . The remaining 10 references were decided by a bench of Justice Vinit Kumar Mathur and Justice Chandra Shekhar Sharma between April 7 and August 6.

The oldest reference in the batch, State v Dinesh , was filed in 2021 and concerned murder and offences under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. References filed in 2022— State v Jitendra @ Jitu and State v Narpat Singh —and in 2023— State v Ramesh Kumar Dhakad —also arose from the rape and murder of minor girls. The 2024 references included State v Kalu and State v Kamlesh Aka Karan , while the 2025 references were murder cases.

Under Section 366 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, a death sentence passed by a trial court must be submitted to the high court for confirmation. The high court can confirm the capital sentence, commute it, or acquit the accused.

Premlal: a chain that broke

The July 14 acquittal in State of Rajasthan v Premlal concerned a man sentenced to death for the murder of his wife. The deceased's father said his daughter had been married to the accused for about seven years. Around a year before the incident, the accused married another woman; the deceased then left the matrimonial home and lived with her parents.

The prosecution alleged that the wife received a call from the accused asking her to meet him, after which she left home and did not return for two days. A missing-person report ultimately led to the recovery of her dead body.

The high court, however, found the prosecution case unable to withstand scrutiny. It noted discrepancies, inconsistencies and loopholes at multiple places.

The court observed:

"...on an overall appreciation of the evidence, this Court finds that the prosecution has failed to establish several essential links in the chain of circumstances . The last seen circumstance remains doubtful; the motive remains unproved; the investigation suffers from material omissions and procedural irregularities; the recoveries are surrounded by serious suspicion; the electronic evidence lacks proper foundational proof; and the medical evidence does not conclusively support the prosecution theory to the exclusion of every other possibility ."

Arjun Singh: 'rarest of the rare' missing

The first reference decided in the batch also ended in acquittal. In State of Rajasthan v Arjun Singh , the trial court had convicted the accused of murdering two children—a boy and his sister—and of sexually assaulting the girl. The prosecution alleged that the boy quarrelled with the accused over cutting a tree branch, leading to his murder, and that the girl was then raped and killed to eliminate the witness.

The high court held that the case rested solely on circumstantial evidence, and the prosecution had "miserably failed" to establish any chain of events pointing to the accused. No motive was proved, medical reports were inconclusive, and recoveries were made in the absence of any independent witness.

The court was equally critical of the trial court's approach:

"Thus, the prosecution has failed to establish the case beyond all reasonable doubt so as to hold the accused/appellant guilty of the offences. It is a bit astonishing to note that a case wherein this Court is facing difficulty to find any trace of evidence supporting the case of the prosecution, the accused/appellant has been convicted with death sentence by the learned Trial Court. Not a whisper is found in the impugned judgment so as to make the present case fall within the category of ' rarest of the rare ' case."

A reminder of the capital sentencing standard

The decisions underline two legal essentials. First, in cases based on circumstantial evidence, the prosecution must establish a complete and unbroken chain of circumstances that points only to the guilt of the accused. Second, a death sentence cannot be confirmed unless the trial court's judgment demonstrably applies the "rarest of the rare" test and records the reasons that elevate the case to that category.

By disposing of all 11 pending references, the Rajasthan High Court has cleared a significant backlog of capital punishment confirmation matters. For the nine convicts, the death sentence has been commuted; for the two acquitted persons, the conviction has been set aside.