A district and sessions court sentenced Sanjay Roy, found guilty of the rape and murder of the doctor in R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, to rigorous imprisonment for the length of his natural life. The judge did not feel that the death penalty would be suitable as he did not find this a ‘rarest of rare’ case. This principle was laid down by the Supreme Court in the Bachan Singh case of 1979 and the judge referred to its stringent criteria. Two issues are brought out by the sentence. The broader issue is that however stringent the criteria, the principle of ‘rarest of rare’ would contain an element of the subjective, small though it may be. The other issue is more specific. The judgment of ‘rarest of rare’ can be made only when the prosecution provides the appropriate investigation and evidence. The judge said that these did not convince him that the case was exceptional. This has given more grist to the mill of the disappointed, including the doctor’s parents, who felt that the Central Bureau of Investigation had failed in mounting a fitting prosecution. The popular demand for the death penalty for Roy, echoed simultaneously by politicians, including the chief minister, pulls strongly against the judgment. The sentence, based on evidence, cannot bow to popular sentiment or emotional appeals, as the judge pointed out. Yet the crime was heinous enough to have shocked the collective conscience of the community, a condition of ‘rarest of rare’ cases, as some have remarked.
The judge’s emphasis was on reform. The reformatory function of imprisonment militates against the death penalty, although the popular sentiment against Roy finds this irrelevant. But the death penalty in general has been found to be an inadequate deterrent against crime the world over. Since new and more rigorous laws are being promulgated against rape since the 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder, the death penalty for rape has become an intensely debated issue. The high rate of rape and gang rape in India shows that the penalty is far from a deterrent. Death penalty raises moral quandaries. Worse, the tendency to murder the target increases because of the possibility of being recognised. Roy’s sentence throws into relief the difficult questions surrounding rape case judgments while the public sentiment underlines the uncomfortable differences of perception between the law and the people.