NEW DELHI: In the Tahir Hussain case, additional sessions judge Praveen Singh observed that no specific act during the murder had been attributed to, or proved against, any of the convicts.
The judge said the law does not prevent courts from imposing death penalty on a person found vicariously guilty of murder. “However, in my opinion, in such cases before a court imposes death penalty, it must prove something more than mere membership of an unlawful assembly, even if not participation in a fatal assault.”
The judge rejected the prosecution’s argument that the use of a heavy cutting weapon upon the victim was indicative of a pre-planned and cold-blooded intent, saying that “the time for drawing inferences from mere indications is long past”.
“At the stage of sentencing, particularly where death penalty is under consideration, the court can proceed only on facts which have been proved during the trial and not on possibilities, however persuasive they may appear,” he said.
Observing that convicts Javed, Kasim and Nazim were illiterate, while Anas had studied up to Class IV, he said although lack of education should not be considered a mitigating factor, as there is no proven link between education and criminal behaviour, the present offence took place amid a climate of religious frenzy fuelled by misinformation spread by vested interests. In such circumstances, the judge noted that the four convicts, being uneducated, were more likely to have been susceptible to such propaganda.
“Persons with little or no education are generally less equipped to critically evaluate misinformation, verify truthfulness of inflammatory claims, or resist manipulation of individuals who seek to exploit communal tensions. I feel educational background of the convicts, particularly their susceptibility to manipulation when vitiated by misinformation and communal frenzy, constitutes a relevant mitigating circumstance while determining the sentence,” he said.
However, for the other offences the convicts have been found guilty of, they must face the full force of the law. It is because these crimes were committed in complete disdain for the law. There is no special test required before the maximum sentence can be inflicted.