NEW DELHI, Aug 13:
The Supreme Court today reserved its verdict on a plea filed by jailed former Youth Congress leader Sushil Sharma challenging his conviction and death sentence in the 1995 Naina Sahni murder case, which became famous as the ‘tandoor’ case.
A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice P Sathasivam concluded the hearing on the petition during which Sharma’s counsel and senior advocate Jaspal Singh said the case did not fall in the rarest of rare category warranting capital punishment.
He submitted the conviction was entirely based on the circumstantial evidence and death penalty cannot be awarded to the convict.
However, the prosecution said the case falls in the category of the rarest of rare and the trial court and the Delhi High Court were justified in awarding death sentence.
The arguments before the bench, also comprising justices Ranjana Prakash Desai and Ranjan Gogoi, had commenced five years after Sharma filed the appeal against the Delhi High Court judgement confirming the conviction and death penalty awarded to him for murdering his wife Naina on suspicion that she was having an extra-marital affair.
Sharma was convicted for murdering his wife and then disposing of her body by burning it in a tandoor.
Sharma, in his petition filed in 2007, has contended the high court had erroneously concluded that the offence committed by him falls under the rarest of rare category, warranting capital punishment.
The high court had on February 19, 2007 confirmed the death penalty awarded to him by the trial court saying the offence was an act of extreme depravity that shook the conscience of the society.
It had held the reasoning given by the trial court for convicting and awarding death sentence to Sharma in the case was justified and he did not deserve any mercy for the gruesome killing.
The high court had rejected the mercy plea of reducing the death sentence into life imprisonment for Sharma.
It had rejected his contention that the offence was committed on the spur of moment. The trial court had on November 7, 2003 sentenced Sharma to death for killing his wife at their residence in Gole Market area in central Delhi on the intervening night of July 2-3, 1995. (PTI)
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