CHENNAI: Life imprisonment awarded to a student, found guilty of murdering a fellow student, by a lower court has been reduced by Madras High Court to that of four year jail term with a fine of Rs 2 lakh, to enable the accused to get reformed.
The High Court also set aside the sentence for murder and instead convicted the student, D Parthiban, for culpable homicide.
While partly allowing a criminal appeal, challenging the orders of the Kanchipuram District and Sessions judge, a division bench of Justices S Nagamuthu and Anita Sumanth granted the relief to the student, D Parthiban. “There was a fight between the accused and the deceased. This would clearly go to show that the wordy quarrel had culminated into a fight. There was no premeditation. Thus, the accused did not intend to cause the death of the deceased at all. Having lost his self-control due to the quarrel and fight, the accused had taken a wooden plank lying there and made a single blow on the head of the deceased. This act of the accused, in our considered view, would not fall within the third limb of Sec. 300 IPC of the IPC,” the bench said and reduced the sentence.
In the result, the criminal appeal is partly allowed and the conviction and sentence imposed on the appellant for offence under Section 302 IPC (murder) is set aside and instead, he is convicted for offence under Section 304(II) IPC (punishment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for four years and to pay a fine of Rs 2 lakh, the bench said.
At the time of the incident Parthiban was a student doing second year BE in an engineering college in Kancheepuram. He quarrelled with Rajkumar (20), who was staying in the hostel attached to the college and doing second year in ECE branch, which ended in the latter’s death on September 5, 2008.
The bench said the reduction in sentence was to reform the accused. The fine amount should be paid to the parents of the deceased student as compensation, the judges added.