Thursday, February 10 2005 16:16 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Stressing that leniency in punishing grave crimes would have "serious consequences", the Supreme Court has awarded death sentence to a man finding him guilty of rape and murder of a six-year old.

Setting aside an order of Allahabad High Court acquitting Satish of rape and murder charges, a Bench of Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice S H Kapadia restored the trial court order convicting and sentencing him to death after noting that the case fell within the "rarest of rare" category.

Vishakha, a student in a Sarvodaya Public School in a village of Uttar Pradesh, was lured on some pretext by the accused and was last seen by three witnesses taking her on a bicycle on March 16, 2003. Her body was found a day later in the nearby sugarcane field.

The trial Court, relying on the circumstantial evidence, convicted Satish and sentenced him to death. The High Court, on appeal, felt it was not safe to base conviction solely on circumstantial evidence and acquitted him of all charges.

Setting aside the High Court order, the Apex Court said that the offence became "abominable" and "diabolical" as the victim was a child who was brutally killed after the "depraved" act.

Justice Pasayat, writing for the Bench, said awarding disproportionate punishment to an offence "has some very undesirable practical consequences" on the society.

Holding that the trial court was right in grouping the case within the "rarest of rare" category, the Bench said that the award of death penalty was "appropriate" and the acquittal by the High Court was "clearly unsustainable".