2013 rape-murder case: Calcutta HC commutes convict’s death penalty to life term with no remission for 50 years, cites mild mental disability

KOLKATA: Calcutta High Court on Tuesday commuted the death penalty of a 45-year-old man convicted of raping and murdering a two-and-a-half-year-old child in Kidderpore in 2013 — stating that the crime did not “fall under the rarest-of-rare” category — and sentenced him to life in jail without remission for 50 years.The HC division bench of justices Debangsu Basak and Md Shabbar Rashidi also took into account the psychological evaluation report of the convict that said he suffered from ‘mild mental disability’.

In the intervening night of July 20 and 21, 2013, stable hand Suresh Paswan, then employed with Royal Calcutta Turf Club (RCTC), had abducted the toddler from a shanty under the Kidderpore ramp of Vidyasagar Setu where she lived with her grandmother, sexually assaulted her, strangled her to death and dumped the body in a drain near the northern gate of RCTC. The body was discovered by a couple of slum kids on the morning of July 21. After the child’s death, her mother, who suffered from psychiatric illnesses, also went missing.Paswan, who then lived in a shed that housed Race Course stable hands, fled to his village in Bihar and was nabbed from there a day later.An autopsy report showed that the child’s body bore 17 injuries, establishing that she was subjected to brutal sexual assault.

She bled from the nostrils and ears and her death was due to manual strangulation, the report said. On March 28, 2019, a city sessions court sentenced Paswan, then 41, to death for the murder of the toddler and awarded him 20 years in jail for rape under Pocso.On Tuesday, the HC division bench of Justice Debangsu Basak and Justice Md Shabbar Rashidi upheld Paswan’s conviction but did not find it a “rarest of rare case” to justify death sentence.“The appellant is aged 45 years and comes from a very poor economic background. He was married, but his wife left the appellant. He used to reside alone in the horse stable. The circumstances of the case do not suggest that the offence committed was pre-planned or was an outcome of any rivalry or enmity with the family of the victim. As the Supreme Court held in many cases, every murder is gruesome but does not justify the death penalty.

In any case, we are not in a position to return a finding that the offence involved in the case at hand falls under the category of ‘rarest of rare cases’ to justify the punishment of death,” the HC held.Paswan’s psychological evaluation report suggested his current intellectual functioning fell under the category of mild mental disability, which could be attributed to his lack of education. A socio-economic report showed Paswan was an only child.

His father died before his birth and he was brought up by his mother, who worked as an agricultural labourer. “His life has been reeling under poverty,” the HC observed.“It is trite law that imposition of the death penalty should be resorted to if the circumstances of the case and the evidence led therein leave an impression that the option of imposition of any other penalty stands foreclosed. The possibility of future reformation is also a relevant factor to be taken into consideration while awarding the death sentence to a convict,” the bench observed.