Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, June 19: Principal Sessions Judge, Kishtwar, Pawan Dev Kotwal today awarded life imprisonment to Mohd Abas, son of Mohd Afzal Wani of Sheri Chatroo in murder case
The accused was held guilty and convicted for murder yesterday and the case was adjourned for arguments on quantum of sentence for today.
After hearing Public Prosecturor R K Goswami for the State and Advocate M N Waza for the accused person, Principal Sessions Judge observed, “sentence provided for the offence of murder is death penalty or in alternative imprisonment for life and also fine. In the amended code, life imprisonment is the rule and capital sentence is an exception to be resorted to for the reasons to be recorded”.
“Law has now been settled by catena of judgements of Supreme Court that death penalty is to be imposed in the rarest of the rare cases”, the Court said, adding “admittedly every murder is gruesome that is why the code provides only two extreme penalties”.
“From the perusal of charge sheet itself, it is revealed that the accused after the occurrence had surrendered before the police and even during the trial of this case his conduct was satisfactory”, the Court said, adding “it appears that accused showed some remorse as such there are chances of his reformation. In such circumstances instead of eliminating offender from the society by imposing death penalty, a fair chance needs to be given to him which may also help in changing the mind set of similarly situated persons involved in such activities”.
With these observations, court awarded life imprisonment and also fine to the tune of Rs 5000 to the accused subject to the confirmation by the High Court.
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