From Principle to Arbitrariness: The Erosion of the ‘Rarest of the Rare’ Doctrine in India's Death Penalty Jurisprudence

Author: Ayush Ranjan

ABSTRACT

This article deals with two main aspects: the first deals with how rarest of the rare test, devised vis-d-vis the death penalty cases, was broken down into various factors and analysed whimsically. The second deals with what was the reasoning of the Court behind this whimsical engagement. Here the Court advanced the principles of ‘public opinion’ and 'triple test'. The problem with these approaches is that it defeats the entire purpose of the rarest rare guideline. Bachan Singh restricted the death penalty to the rarest of rare cases. Bariyar further advised the judges to analyse a set of similar cases to be able to determine if the case being heard was rarest or rare. Gurvail Singh established certain crimes as particularly deserving of the death penalty. In Shankar Khade, the Court emphasized the need for evidence to guide death sentences. The addition or subtraction of various elements to the rarest of rare formulation ended up tempering with the very intent of Bachan Singh. The fact that in very few cases the original intent was preserved goes to show that the subjective interpretations of various judges go a long way in deciding the outcome of capital cases. At times the court added the triple test, society's call for justice, public opinion or collective conscience to the mix; at other times it gave one priority over the other. There is no way of knowing which way the judicial coin will land. Heads one could live and tails one could die. The court believed that the rarest of rare guidelines would provide the necessary guidance for the exercise of judicial discretion in crimes of murder, thereby installing a guarantee against the death penalty from being arbitrary. However, the phenomenon of judicial discretion led to several innovations of their own, failing to keep arbitrariness at bay. Undoubtedly, the courts engaged in cherry- picking of facts apropos of crime and criminal.

I. INTRODUCTION

The ‘rarest of rare’ stipulation placed value on the importance of life by restricting its absolute denunciation. It also placed value on the notions of dignity and human life by instituting some safeguards against an irrevocable punishment. This test was one of the unique innovations of the Court in trying to minimise the unrestricted imposition of the death penalty in India. With its introduction, death sentences were to be meted out only if the alternative option was unquestionably foreclosed. Whether or not this formulation has been understood and followed in subsequent cases is the focus of this paper.

1.1  The Original Intent: Rigor, Fairness, and Avoiding Arbitrariness

In an effort to explain the intent of Bachan Singh, the Court in Bariyar stated that the conclusion that the case belongs to rarest of rare category must conform to highest standards of judicial rigour and thoroughness. The whole point of a principle like rarest of rare is to make the award of the death penalty a thoroughly thought-out act. The idea behind introducing rigour in terms of looking at the facts and the circumstances of the case along with those of the criminal is to be absolutely sure that no one is awarded a death sentence, simply because it seems to be the most obvious punishment. Instead, the death penalty must be granted only when it is most fitting and fair.

In Bachan Singh, the court strongly suggested that:

Judges should not take upon themselves the responsibility of becoming oracles or spokesmen of public opinion .... When Judges take upon themselves the responsibility of setting down social norms of conduct, there is every danger, despite their effort to make a rational guess of the notions of right and wrong prevailing in the community at large. The perception of 'community' standards or ethics may vary from Judge to Judge …  Judges have no divining rod to divine accurately the will of the people.

Here the court recognised the danger of the personal opinions of judges making their way into the law. It is also possible that the judges may wrongly presume their own views to be reflective of a larger public sentiment or ethic. Naturally different judges may presume different norms to be the defining feature of society. A better way than is to have one uniform legal principle so that such variations could be avoided. This is what the Court pointed towards in Bachan Singh. However, these guidelines have been variously interpreted and misinterpreted.

1.2  Post-Bachan Singh Variations: The Erosion of Original Intent

In the period following Bachan Singh, several variations of the judgement emerged. These variations served to follow or reject the intent and content of the ‘rarest of rare’ formulation. An analysis of the cases in this period, calls attention to the inconsistency that runs through the Supreme Court decisions in death penalty cases over this period.

The court shifted to focus on newer conceptions like ‘public opinion’, ‘social necessity’ and ‘cry for justice’. These new principles exemplified the fading impact of the Bachan Singh test. Hence, the concerns about the death penalty being “arbitrarily or freakishly imposed” were still present⁵.

The immediate impact of Bachan Singh⁶ had been a decline in the judicial award of death sentences. In the early 1980s, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence in very few judgements. The Bachan Singh judgement placed emphasis on the reform of offenders in its 'rarest of rare' formulation. In the judgement, it was stated that the offender's ability to reform was to be necessarily presumed unless the state could prove the opposite with the help of evidence. This was to become a mitigating factor in ascertaining whether the case deserved the death penalty. Such a guideline led to commutation in a number of cases.

1.3  Initial Impact and the Presumption of Reform

In Mukund and anr. v. State of Madhya Pradesh, the Supreme Court commuted the death sentence where the trial court had stressed the helplessness of the victims and the greed motive of the crime. While the Court agreed about the heinousness of the crime it still did not think this case to be one of the 'rarest of rare cases' as exemplified in Bachan Singh v. the State of Punjab and Machhi Singh

v. the State of Punjab. In Muniappan v. State of Tamil Nadu, the Supreme Court overturned the lower court's argument that the murder was 'terrific' and thereby deserving of the death penalty.

Instead, the Court argued that all murders were terrific and if all of them were punished with death, it would defeat the very intent of Section 354(3).

In some other cases, the courts misinterpreted the 'rarest of rare' dictum and interpreted it literally. In the case of Allauddin Mian and others., Sharif Mian and anr. v. the State of Bihar, that involved the killing of two infants, the Supreme Court noted that since motive could not be established, it could not be decided if this was a rarest of rare case. The Court said that the other elements of the case were not sufficiently uncommon so as to make it a rarest of a rare situation.

Ravindra Trimbak Chouthmal's case provides an extreme example of this approach. The case involved the brutal killing of an eight-month pregnant woman, for dowry. While noting that the crime was “most foul” the Court said that such cases had stopped being "rarest of rare." It was specifically noted in Machhi Singh that dowry deaths were to be seen as extraordinary and worthy of the death penalty. However, this dictum was not followed very sincerely. While commutation may be welcome in effect, the literal understanding of the Bachan Singh test took it far from its original intent. In Suresh and anr. v. State of Uttar Pradesh, the accused had hacked the deceased and his entire family to pieces, over a piece of land. The Court observed that the case was not part of the rarest of rare category and that it did not agree with the argument inherent in it.

1.4  Perfunctory References and Neglect of Mitigating Factors

In some other cases, the Benches made mandatory references to the Bachan Singh doctrine. However, it lacked any real understanding of both rarest of rare dictum as well as the necessity of comparing the aggravating and mitigating circumstances. In Mohan and ors. v. State of Tamil Nadu, the Court upheld the death sentence of two of the four convicts who were given the death sentence by the High Court. These two sentences were commuted as the Court did not find the two

accused to have played any role in the killing of the ten-year-old victim. In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the defence stated that the lower courts had categorised the case as 'rarest of rare' but did not provide any explanation for it. The Court observed that on the very face of it, the incident appears to be a gruesome one and indicates the brutality with which the accused persons committed the murder of a young boy and in furtherance of the said plan, they tried to cause the disappearance of the dead body itself. The Court found sufficient evidence to uphold the death penalty for two convicts but did not explain what these proofs were. In Suresh Chandra Bahri v. The State of Bihar¹⁴, the Court identified a list of aggravating factors following Bachan Singh and Machhi Singh but did not try to determine the mitigating circumstances.

II. ‘PUBLIC OPINION’ APPROACH

Starting in the mid-1980s and covering the 90s, the Supreme Court turned its attention towards the notion of 'public outrage' over the nature of the offences committed. The 'threat to society' argument subsumed considerations of reform and rehabilitation of offenders. It went against the very narrative that a punishment like the death penalty should be meted out only in exceptional circumstances.

2.1  The ‘Social Necessity’ Argument

The 'social necessity' argument was first propounded in Krishnappa v. the State of Karnataka. In this case, Justice A.P. Sen argued it is the duty of the court to impose a proper punishment depending upon the degree of criminality and desirability to impose such punishment as a measure of social necessity as a means of deterring other potential offenders. The Court suggested that the provision of death sentences in the IPC emerged from the need to protect the society at large. Those crimes which threatened societal interests deserved the extreme penalty of death. Exceptional circumstances and social necessity had to be analysed side by side. Cases were not just 'rarest of rare' in terms of the particular facts and circumstances they exhibited. Instead, they became rarest of rare in terms of the peculiar threat they posed to the public at large. Similarly, the grant or otherwise of death sentence was not based solely on the basis of circumstances of the criminal. It had to derive from an investigation of what those circumstances meant for the larger society.

2.2  Public Outrage and Denial of Commutation

With rarest of rare receding into the background, public opinion/outrage played a massive role in the Court's denial of commutation. The Billa-Ranga and Munawar Harun Shah's cases are good examples of this. In the former, two young children were kidnapped and murdered, leading to widespread protests and demands for severe punishment. The reason for dismissing the leave petition and other related details were not recorded by the Court. Later the accused Kuljeet Singh (Ranga) filed a separate writ petition. The Court rejected the plea for commutation. It also did not provide any evidence and argued that the offenders did not deserve any sympathy even in terms of the evolving standards of decency of a maturing society. The Court observed that the survival of an orderly society demands the extinction of the life of persons like Ranga and Billa who are a menace to social order and security....

In Munawar Harun Shah's case, the effect of popular pressure on the matter of writ petition became visible. The special leave petitions dismissed in 1980 remain unreported in this case as well. Bachan Singh's judgement had stressed the importance of a pre-sentencing hearing. Although in Munawar, the Court did not conform to this hearing requirement. The review petitions were dismissed twice in 1981 and 1982. The Court did not offer any reason for the same. This case involved seven murders, and having regard to the magnitude, the gruesome nature of offences and the manners perpetrating them²¹, the Supreme Court categorised it as ‘rarest of rare’. The Court,

anticipating a negative public opinion in case of a softer judgement argued, any leniency shown in the matter of sentence would not only be misplaced but will certainly give rise to and foster a feeling of private revenge among the people leading to destabilisation of the society. Not only did the Court reject the petitions, but it also called for early execution of the accused. Before this, in Sevaka Perumal too, the Court spoke of ‘private vengeance’ in the event that the judgement failed to fulfil the victim's expectation of justice.

2.3  Social Necessity, Judicial Conscience, and Deterrence

In 1987, another Bench of the Supreme Court gave the social necessity and deterrence argument. This was the case of Mahesh and others v. State of Madhya Pradesh. Here, Justices Khalid and Oza upheld the death sentences of two accused in caste- based killings of five people. The judgement talks about ‘the evil of Untouchability’ but not about the role of the accused. The High Court stated that the act was extremely brutal, revolting and gruesome which shocks the judicial conscience... in such shocking nature of the crime as the one before us which is so cruel, barbaric and revolting, it is necessary to impose such maximum punishment under the law as a measure of social necessity which works as a deterrent to other potential offenders. In this case, ‘social necessity’ was placed alongside the conception of ‘judicial conscience’. It is difficult to say if the Court imposed its own understanding of moral/immoral on the society or if it changed its own understanding in face of pressure from society. In either case, the lines between judicial understanding of a perpetual threat to society and societal understandings of the same, seemed to blur.

Further, in Mahesh, the Court observed that it will be a mockery of justice to permit these appellants to escape the extreme penalty of law when faced with such evidence and such cruel acts. To give the lesser punishment for the appellants would be to render the justice system of this country suspect. The common man will lose faith in courts. In such cases, he understands and appreciates the language of deterrence more than the reformative jargon. The Court acknowledged

the need to focus on the reformation in general. In this instance, however, the Court imposed the death sentence. Moreover, no mitigating circumstances were discussed in this judgement. It seemed as if concerns of 'rarest' easily gave way to societal expectations of the judiciary. In entire judgements, Court stressed mainly what the society expects of it, and how the commissioning of certain offences went against the society. There was no detailed discussion on what it was about the facts and circumstances of the case at hand, that made it 'rarest of rare'.

In this case, the Court further added deterrence to the mix. The Court suggested that it is necessary for society to keep certain criminals locked up, to minimise the possibility of a repeat offence. With social necessity arguments gaining prominence, deterrence logically became another significant part of this package. Criminals who had already harmed social interests had to be incapacitated to an extent that they could not shock the moral fibre twice. In these early cases, instead of investigating whether or not a criminal showed any potential to reform, the Court set to investigate his propensity to violence, to an extent that he would engage in shocking the collective conscience again. In Bachan Singh²⁵, the Courts were advised to present evidence that the offender could not be reformed. Starting mid-1980s however, the Court simply presented evidence that the accused had a marked proclivity to violence. The rationale for awarding death was altered.

2.4  Social Necessity, Lack of Mitigating Circumstances, and Public Confidence

Similar to Mahesh, in Asharfi Lal and ors. v. State of Uttar Pradesh too, arguments based on 'social necessity' came to the fore. Yet again, mitigating circumstances received no mention. There was no analysis of the specific positioning of the criminal vis-a-vis the crime he had committed. Factors of age, poverty, illiteracy did not receive any mention as the majority of the attention was focussed on how the particular crime had ongoing implications for the public at large. To begin with, at any given time, it is not possible to accurately assess societal opinion towards any crime/criminal. In making something as abstract and fleeting as public opinion, the basis of granting life or death, the Court was giving in to emotions at best. Deterrence and protection of society from criminals was given priority over the reformative approach. The Court argued, undue

sympathy to impose inadequate sentence would do more harm to the justice system to undermine public confidence in the efficacy of law and society could not long ensure under serious threats.... if the court did not protect the injured, the injured would then resort to private vengeance.

In 1996 again the court again noted the possibility of public revenge. In Gentela Vijayavardhan Rao and anr. v. State of Andhra Pradesh, a bus was set to fire with a large number of people in it, following a failed robbery attempt. The Court rejected the mitigating circumstances like the young age of the accused, the primary motive being robbery, lack of prior planning in the killings as well as the fact that those who could, were allowed to escape. The Court stated that these were eclipsed by many aggravating circumstances and planned pogrom... executed with extreme depravity and... the inhuman manner in which they plotted the scheme and executed it. The Court also stated that if this type of person is allowed to escape the death penalty, it would result in a miscarriage of justice and the common man would lose faith in the justice system. Earlier, in this case, the High Court had argued that the death penalty was required to diminish any possibility of retaliation by the public against the offenders. Once again there was no analysis of the circumstances of the criminal, in the judgement.

In Ram Deo Chauhan and anr. v. State of Assam^, Justices Thomas and Sethi, while advancing the argument of society's well-being and protection argued that, when a man becomes a beast and menace to the society, he can be deprived of his life. The Court's reasoning revolved around the fact that anybody who performs a pre-planned quadruple murder does not deserve to be shown any sympathy. Such criminals, the Court argued, must be given the death sentence in order to protect society while simultaneously deterring others. The same Bench in Narayan Chetanram Chaudharyand anr. v. the State of Maharashtra, upheld the death sentence of the convicts, who were found guilty of robbery and five murders. The Court concluded that these convicts were so self-centred on the idea of self-preservation that doing away with all inmates of the house was settled upon them as an important part of the plan from the beginning. In this case, pre-meditation was translated as a deep intent to cause harm at large. Those persons who had already exhibited extreme selfishness by engaging in a pre-planned crime that harmed societal interests did not deserve a second chance.

In Gurdev Singh and anr. v. the State of Punjab, Justices Srikrishna and Balakrishna upheld the death sentence of two offenders who had assisted in killing thirteen people. The Court argued that the case shocked the collective conscience of the community. While there were no previous offences in their name, the Court believed the convicts to be permanent threats to society. It argued the acts of murder committed by the appellants are so gruesome, merciless and brutal that the aggravating circumstances far outweigh the mitigating circumstances.

III. THE TRIPLE TEST

The Court, in Mohd. Farooq Abdul Gafurv. State of Maharashtra noted that the disparity in sentencing by [the] court flowing out of varied interpretations to the rarest of rare expression.A word of caution was also inserted by the Court where it said that an inconsistent and random understanding of the rarest of the rare test might end up violating Article 14. A look at the cases above makes it clear that different judges interpreted the content and intent of the rarest of rare principle differently. Too many important decisions in death penalty cases came to rely upon the individual judges. This seemed to install a heterogeneous as well as a “judge-centric” system of determining cases while simultaneously dealing with the rarest of rare criteria. In effect, the arbitrary and subjective application of the rarest of the rare formulation converted “principled sentencing” into “judge-centric sentencing”. Sentencing appeared to have become a factor of the subjective understanding of the various judges

3.1  Judicial Recognition of Inconsistency

This challenge was recognised by the court itself in Sangeet v. State of Haryana, Swami Shradhhananda and Khade. In Sangeet v. State of Haryana, the Court observed that the Bachan Singh dictum was somewhere “lost in translation”. In Bariyar the court suggested that there is no uniformity of precedents, to say the least. In most cases, the death penalty has been affirmed or refused to be affirmed by us, without laying down any legal principle⁴⁰. In a lot of other instances as well, the Supreme Court mentioned that the rarest of rare doctrine developed in the Bachan Singh case has been arbitrarily used.

The observations of the Supreme Court in Khade, Swamy Shraddhananda v. the State of Karnataka, Farooq Abdul Gafurv. State of Maharashtra,Aloke Nath Dutta v. State of West Bengal are relevant here. The court responded to this by improvising on the Bachan Singh framework and the 'public opinion' approach. In the case of Gurvail Singh v. the State of Punjab⁴⁵, the Supreme Court put forward three more conditions that had to be fulfilled before awarding the death penalty. These tests were:

1. The crime test (dealt with the aggravating circumstances of any case)

2. The criminal test (it means that there should not be any mitigating circumstances that favour of accused)

3. If both these tests are fulfilled, then the 'rarest of rare cases test'. Instead of being 'judge-centric', this test would derive from society's attitude towards a particular crime.

The Supreme Court observed that while applying this test, the Court has to look into a variety of factors like society's abhorrence, extreme indignation and antipathy to certain types of crimes. Once again, the Court stressed the need to consider public opinion. It seemed as if the Court kept alternating between public opinion to reformation, back to public opinion, so on and so forth.

The Court had to analyses what type of crimes produced the strongest reactions from the public at large. This was to help determine what cases were so rare in their core, that they absolutely shook the society's moral fibre. Such an analysis was to guide the courts in assessing whether or not to award the death sentence in the case before it. This test was further elaborated upon in Mofil Khan

v. the State of Jharkhand. Here the court said that the real purpose behind this test is to basically examine whether the society abhors such crimes and whether such crimes shook the conscience of the society and attract intense and extreme indignation of the community.

3.2  Challenges of the Triple Test: Judge-Centrism and Public Opinion

In the triple test system, the so-called ‘judge-centrism’ can be dealt with by bringing in the society's response to any particular crime. This is important because, as acknowledged in Bachan Singh and later reiterated in Bariyar, judges end up considering their own presumptions and predilections as against those of society. This is so because even if we were to assume the existence of a clearly quantifiable public opinion, the judges do not have any means of accessing that particular opinion.

While Bachan Singh did not name the exact crimes that warranted the death penalty, the triple test analysis aimed to do exactly that by advancing the “Rarest of Rare Cases test”. Under this test, the

courts had to engage in an in-depth study of those cases where the death sentence had been imposed, by virtue of the rarest of rare principles. If the circumstances of the case at hand matched the circumstances of those that had to be studied, the death penalty was to be the obvious choice of punishment. This clearly went against the spirit of Bachan Singh's judgement that hoped to set up a case-by-case system of analysis. Instead of rigorously analyzing the attributes of the case before it, the court had to see if it aligned with the attributes of some other cases that had already received the death penalty. This led to another problem. In their enthusiasm to use the 'rarest of rare' lens to understand the case before them or just use the phrase the Court many times ignored those facts that made a case singular. This is problematic because while cases were similar, they were certainly not the same. Further, the similarity index applied only to the gruesomeness of the crimes and sometimes the motive for which these crimes were committed. For logical reasons, it could not hold true for differential positioning of different criminals that committed different crimes.

The departure from Bachan Singh was made both in terms of the analytical framework and the pertinent factors to be thought about (particularly public opinion). The three-tier test thereby contributed to the conceptual confusion surrounding the rarest of rare criteria. The benefit of this triple test is that it minimises the chances of death penalty imposition to those cases that fully lack any mitigating circumstances. In a way then this three-fold criteria is also in line with the intent of the Bachan Singh guidelines, wherein only the most exceptional cases deserved the death penalty. It further nuanced the notion of 'rarity' that had to be looked at by the courts in dealing with capital cases.

Like the 'public opinion' approach, the triple test also involves an examination of society's perspective towards a particular issue/crime. Unsurprisingly then it also suffers from the problems of the former approach. It falsely assumes that society is one identifiable grouping with a clearly discernible set of opinions. It does not give due regard to the fact that society's opinion does not emerge from a full knowledge of the facts of the case or what would be the most justified way of dealing with a crime. Rather it is a mere feeling. Law, on the other hand, cannot be based on feelings. How people understand crime or identify guilt is not something that is based on objective facts. It is very much a factor in their subjective understanding of the world. Generally speaking, the courts lack the means to acquire and thoroughly examine public opinion in all cases that come

to it for consideration of the death sentence. Moreover, there is no one clearly discernible box of public opinion that can present all the relevant information on any particular case. Society, in itself, maybe divided between those who favour reformation and those who presume the end of justice to be revenge or retribution. In such situations, how will the Court be able to choose the relevant public opinion? Once again, which side is chosen comes to depend on the subjective predilection of judges. And once again, the outcome of death penalty cases comes to depend not on objective criteria but subjective interpretations of that criterion.

3.3  Judicial Acknowledgment of Limitations and the Counter-Majoritarian Role

In Bariyar, the Court itself acknowledged this limitation when it stated that "how people understand any crime is neither an objective circumstance relating to crime nor to the criminal” Here the Court emphasized the difficulty of quantifying public opinion. Further in Bariyar, it was recommended that courts must give due attention to constitutional safeguards.

These safeguards introduce values of institutional propriety, in terms of fairness, reasonableness and equal treatment challenge with respect to the procedure to be invoked by the state in its dealings with people in various capacities, including as a convict. In Bariyar, the Court acknowledged that involving public opinion as against invoking constitutional proviso would subsume the model enshrined by the Bachan Singh judgement. This implies that the court has to play a counter-majoritarian role. It must save individual interest against majoritarian tendencies. There may also be versions of public opinion that go against constitutionalism or rule of law. The courts, however, must function within the bounds of constitutionalism as well as rule of law.

Giving too much importance to public opinion or giving in to public pressure can be problematic. A court has to be an institution of law and not merely public opinion. Courts do not always have to exactly represent or work as per the public opinion. Judges certainly form part of society. Undoubtedly, they may express views that sometimes coincide with the larger public opinion. There may also be cases when it goes completely against the said opinion. In either scenario, the law must be given primacy over any opinion. There should not be any pressure on the judges, Benches or courts to infuse public opinion into the formal framework of law, especially when it comes to an irrevocable punishment like the death penalty. If one simply has to worry about satisfying public expectations of a trial, then there is not much point in bringing any case to the courts.

3.4 The Death Penalty as Spectacle and the Limits of Retribution

Concentrating excessively on public opinion also entails the danger of the death penalty "becoming a spectacle in media. If media trial is a possibility, sentencing by media cannot be ruled out”. The point made by K.G.Kannabiran is relevant here. He has noted that modern states retain the death penalty on their statutes in order to turn the sentence into a spectacle. He writes,

On the morning of 30th December 2006, those of us living in countries of the eastern hemisphere was startled to witness the unforgettably morbid and macabre sight of a very composed Saddam Hussein being prepared for his execution. Rarely, in recent memory, has the world been witness to execution within minutes of the event  it equally strongly stoked the voyeuristic in some, fed the morbid curiosity of others, and gave a diabolic twenty-first-century expressive form to the practice of revenge through 'blood letting', in a manner no fictional creation could as evocatively or forcefully ever have.

This is also what justice as revenge can lead to. To feel vindicated at someone’s death should not be the objective of any justice system. This is the limit of retribution as a revenge model of punishment.

IV. CONCLUSION

This article with two main aspects: the first deals with how the rarest of the rare test was broken down into various factors and analysed whimsically. The second deals with what was the reasoning of the Court behind this whimsical engagement. Here the Court advanced the principles of 'public opinion' and triple test. The problem with these approaches is that it completely defeats the entire purpose of the rarest rare guideline. Without sufficient discussion about the facts and circumstances of the case and the criminal, the idea of arriving at the most suitable punishment received a short thrift. Looking only at the crime or the criminal would not present a full picture. Any punishment that was meted out by looking only at either would leave some lacunae in the sentencing process. Bachan Singh restricted the death penalty to the rarest of rare cases. Bariyarfurther advised the judges to analyse a set of similar cases to be able to determine if the case being heard was rarest or rare. GurvailSingh established certain crimes as particularly deserving of the death penalty. In Shankar Khade, the Court emphasised the need for evidence to guide death sentences. Unless the courts received evidence, they could not decide if a case at any given point, was "rarer" than a comparative block of other similar/rare cases. The addition or subtraction of various elements to the rarest of rare formulation ended up tempering with the very intent of Bachan Singh. The fact that in very few cases the original intent was preserved goes to show that the subjective interpretations of various judges go a long way in deciding the outcome of capital cases. At times the court added the triple test, society's call for justice, public opinion or collective conscience to the mix; at other times it gave one priority over the other. There is no way of knowing which way the judicial coin will land. Heads one could live and tails one could die. Undoubtedly, the courts engaged in cherry-picking of facts apropos of crime and criminal.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cases

1)    Allauddin Mian and Others v State of Bihar (1989) 3 SCC 5

2)    Aloke Nath Dutta v State of West Bengal (2007) 12 SCC 230

3)    Asharfi Lal and Others v State of Uttar Pradesh AIR 1989 SC 1721

4)    Bachan Singh v State of Punjab (1980) 2 SCC 684

5)    Farooq Abdul Gafur v State of Maharashtra (2010) 14 SCC 641

6)    Gentela Vijayavardhan Rao and Another v State of Andhra Pradesh AIR 1996 SC 2791

7)    Gurdev Singh and Another v State of Punjab AIR 2003 SC 4187

8)    Gurvail Singh @ Gala v State of Punjab (2013) 2 SCC 713

9)    Krishnappa v State of Karnataka (1983) 2 SCC 330

10) Kuljeet Singh alias Ranga v Union of India and Another (1981) 3 SCC 324 (Billa-Ranga case)

11) Machhi Singh and Others v State of Punjab (1983) 3 SCC 470

12) Mahesh and Others v State of Madhya Pradesh AIR 1987 SC 1346

13) Mohan and Others v State of Tamil Nadu (1998) 5 SCC 336

14) Mofil Khan v State of Jharkhand (2015) 1 SCC 67

15) Mohd Farooq Abdul Gafur v State of Maharashtra (2010) 14 SCC 641

16) Muniappan v State of Tamil Nadu (1981) 3 SCC 11

17) Munawar Harun Shah v State of Maharashtra AIR 1983 SC 585 (Joshi-Abhyankar case)

18) Narayan Chetanram Chaudhary and Another v State of Maharashtra (2000) 8 SCC 457

19) Ram Deo Chauhan and Another v State of Assam AIR 2000 SC 2679

20) Ravindra Trimbak Chouthmal v State of Maharashtra (1996) 4 SCC 14

21) Santosh Kumar Satishbhushan Bariyar v State of Maharashtra (2009) 6 SCC 498

22) Sangeet v State of Haryana (2013) 2 SCC 452

23) Suresh Chandra Bahri v State of Bihar AIR 1994 SC 2420

24) Swamy Shraddhananda v State of Karnataka (2008) 13 SCC 767

Secondary Sources

Amnesty International, The LethalLottery: An Examination of the DeathPenalty in India (AI Index: ASA 20/007/2008, Amnesty Internatio