CHENNAI: The Madras High Court on Wednesday commuted the death sentence awarded by a trial court to a 30-year old-youth, for killing his neighbour and packing pieces of her body into two suitcases, to life sentence. The court however made it clear that the convict cannot be released on remission before undergoing 25 years of imprisonment as the crime was against a defenceless woman. A Coimbatore sessions court awarded him death sentence in September 2019.
The issue pertains to the convict Yasar Arafat of Melapalayam village in Tirunelveli, challenging the conviction orders and death sentence of the trial court. According to the prosecution, Arafat murdered N Saroja, a native of Vennathur in Salem, who lived with her husband Nataraj and family in an apartment in Coimbatore.
The woman was reported missing on February 13, 2013, and her mutilated body parts were traced to Arafat’s service apartment on February 21. He was living in the apartment opposite to that of the victim. After murdering her and stealing 12 sovereigns of gold, he chopped the body and packed the pieces in suitcases. To stop the foul smell he sealed the suitcases using cement, submitted the prosecution.
“This is yet another run-of-the-mill case of murder for gain and nothing more or nothing less. In other words, in our view, this case does not fall under the category of “rarest of rare cases” for awarding death penalty,” a division bench of Justices P N Prakash and V Sivagnanam said on Wednesday.
There is no other material, much less any material worth the salt, to show that the appellant had an intrinsic criminal propensity and would be a menace to the society, the judges pointed. “Therefore, we are unable to persuade ourselves to confirm sentence of death... and we substitute the same with life imprisonment together with a rider that the appellant cannot be released before the expiry of 25 years of actual imprisonment under any statutory remission or commutation scheme,” the bench said. On the day of the incident, the appellant was 22-years-old and Saroja was 54. This puts the appellant in the position of her son, judges emphasised.