An apex court Bench comprising of Justices Ranjan Gogoi, PC Pant and UU Lalit commuted the death sentence of the man, Govindachamy.
The Supreme Court rejected Kerala’s curative petition that sought the death penalty for a convict Govindachamy, in the Soumya murder case.
“Having gone through the Curative Petitions and the relevant documents, in our considered opinion, no case is made out within the parameters indicated in the decision of this Court in Rupa Ashok Hurra Vs. Ashok Hurra & Anr., reported in 2002 (4) SCC 388. The Curative Petitions are, accordingly, dismissed,” a six-judge bench looking into this matter ruled.
The Kerala state government had filed the petition after the Supreme Court in its 2016 order had set aside the Kerala High Court judgment awarding the assailant Govindachamy the death penalty.
An apex court Bench comprising of Justices Ranjan Gogoi, PC Pant and UU Lalit had, in September last year, found Govindachamy guilty of rape. However, the bench had overturned the high court order sentencing him to death and instead awarded him a life sentence.
Interestingly, in November, the Supreme Court had initiated contempt proceedings against Justice Markandey Katju after the former SC judge had made personal remarks in two posts— on September 17 and 18 — on a social networking site against judges who had pronounced a ruling on the Soumya rape-murder case. A bench led by the same justices who had presided over the matter had claimed that the posts were, “a serious assault on judges, not on judgments.”
Justice Katju had been invited by the Justice Gogoi-led bench to debate on the several “fundamental flaws” that it had allegedly committed in its September 15 judgement on the well publicised Soumya murder and rape case in 2011. The bench commuted the death sentence of the man, Govindachamy, who had been convicted of these crimes.
Katju had commented in his posts that the SC had seriously "erred in law" in its judgment. His post had said, “This was a grave error in the judgment, not expected of judges who had been in the legal world for decades. Even a student of law in a law college knows this elementary principle that hearsay evidence is inadmissible.”
However, In January 2017, the contempt proceedings were withdrawn, after Justice Katju tendered an unconditional apology to the judges in this matter.
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