The Bombay High Court expressed disapproval of a trial court’s decision to cite a verse from the Mahabharata while awarding a death sentence. Terming the reasoning “strange,” the High Court deemed the reliance on the ancient text as an unwarranted exercise. The judgment raised concerns about the appropriateness of such references in legal decisions.
Mumbai: The Bombay High Court recently questioned the “strange” reasoning behind a trial court’s decision to impose the death penalty in a multi-murder case, including an “unwarranted” reference to the Mahabharata.
The Division Bench, consisting of Justices Vinay Joshi and Abhay Mantri, criticized the trial court for relying solely on statistical data regarding murders, rather than focusing on the specific facts of the case at hand.
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The High Court highlighted that each criminal trial is unique and necessitates an individualized assessment.
The ruling stated on November 13,
“The reasoning assigned by the trial court for awarding capital punishment is quite strange. The trial court has quoted a verse from the Mahabharata, which we find to be an unwarranted exercise. More importantly, in paragraph 344 of the decision, the trial court reproduced crime data regarding the State of Maharashtra for the last 10 years. Based on that statistical data, it was stated that incidents involving four murders in a single event are rare, and thus fall into the category of the ‘rarest of rare’ cases. In our view, this approach is erroneous, as categorizing such cases based on statistical data without returning to the specifics of this case is inadequate. The approach taken by the trial court is wholly erroneous,”
The Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court made these observations while reviewing an appeal filed by a family parents and their son convicted of murdering four relatives over a land dispute.
The case centered on a long-standing conflict regarding 29 acres of ancestral agricultural land. The accused Haribhau Telgote (66), his wife Dwarkabai Telgote (55), and their son Shyam Telgote (35) were convicted by the Sessions Court in May 2024 for the premeditated murders of Dhanraj Charhate, along with his sons Shubham and Gaurav, and his brother Baburao.
In June 2015, Dwarkabai, engaged in a land partition lawsuit against her brothers, had planted cotton on a disputed parcel of land. When Dhanraj objected, a verbal confrontation ensued. Dwarkabai allegedly called her husband and son, who arrived armed with deadly weapons, leading to an attack that resulted in the deaths of four family members.
The Additional Sessions Judge imposed the death penalty, categorizing the case as one of the “rarest of rare.”
The accused appealed to the High Court, arguing that the death penalty was disproportionate. The Bombay High Court, referencing the Supreme Court’s rulings in Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab and Machhi Singh v. State of Punjab, reiterated that the death penalty should be reserved for cases of unparalleled brutality and where the convict shows no potential for reformation.
Applying this standard, the High Court ultimately commuted the death penalty for two of the accused while acquitting one. Haribhau Telgote and his son Shyam Telgote had their convictions upheld but were sentenced to life imprisonment instead of the death penalty, as the Court determined that while the crime was brutal, it did not meet the stringent “rarest of rare” criteria.
The Court acquitted Dwarkabai Telgote, concluding that there was insufficient evidence to demonstrate her active involvement in the murders.
The Court noted,
“At the cost of repetition, we may say that neither did he state that Dwarkabai was holding a weapon, nor was there evidence of her participation in the actual assault. His testimony only refers to the initial dispute between Dwarkabai and the deceased in the field and her telephonic summons to her relatives in village Malpura for assistance,”
Advocate R.M. Daga represented the appellants, while Additional Public Prosecutors S.S. Doifode and A.M. Badar represented the State.