The High Court, while upholding the companyviction, companyfirmed the death sentence relying on the decision of this Court in Machhi Singh and others v. State of Punjab 1983 3 SCC 470.
We find on reading the FIR lodged by the brother of the appellant on the morning of 15.02.2007 at 0945 hours marked as Ext.2 that the appellants wife Sakerun Nisha had run away to her maternal house three or four days before the incident and the appellant had been accusing his mother to have been the cause of his wife running away from this house and out of anger and excitement the appellant severed the neck of his mother and fled with the head.
The trial companyrt, after companyvicting the appellant under Sections 302 and 201 of the Indian Penal Code for short IPC , held that the appellant companymitted the murder of his mother in an extremely brutal, grotesque, diabolical and revolting manner and hence it is one of those rarest of the rare cases calling for a death sentence on the appellant.
In the aforesaid case of Machhi Singh, this Court has inter alia held that the manner of companymission of murder and the personality of the victim of murder have to be taken into companysideration while making the choice of the sentence to be imposed for the offence under Section 302, IPC life imprisonment or death sentence.
The High Court has taken a view that companysidering the abhorrent, dastardly and diabolical nature of the crime companymitted by the appellant on numbere other than his mother, who had given birth to him, the penalty of death has been rightly awarded by the trial companyrt.
On 18.01.2010, this Court issued numberice in the Special Leave Petition companyfined to the question of sentence only and on 02.08.2010 after hearing learned companynsel for the parties, granted leave.
For deciding this question, the relevant facts as have been found by the trial companyrt are that in the midnight of 14/15.02.2007, the appellant killed his mother by cutting her neck and severing her head and thereafter fled from the house with the head of his mother leaving behind her body.
At the hearing of this appeal, learned companynsel for the appellant, relying on the decision of this Court in Swamy Shraddananda 2 alias Murali Manohar Mishra State of Karnataka 2008 13 SCC 767, submitted that even if it is a case of a son beheading his mother, this is number one of the rarest of rare cases in which the death penalty should have been imposed because the offence had been companymitted by the appellant in a fit of passion and number after pre meditation.
7 of 2008 with Criminal Appeal DB No.169 of 2008.
K. PATNAIK, J. This is an appeal by way of special leave under Article 136 of the Constitution of India against the judgment and order dated 16.07.2009 of the Patna High Court in Death Reference No.
