Supreme Court commutes death sentence of man convicted of murdering his two children

The Supreme Court has commuted the death sentence of a man from Karnataka accused of killing his two children, citing a lack of criminal antecedents and flawed sentencing process, Bar and Bench reported on Wednesday.

A bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sanjay Karol and Sandeep Mehta on February 13 reduced the sentence to life imprisonment without remission after noting that the trial court and the Karnataka High Court had not properly weighed mitigating factors before giving the death penalty.

“The appellant-convict had no criminal antecedents, had good relations with the deceased persons and all mitigating circumstances were not considered by the trial court,” Bar and Bench quoted the Supreme Court as saying.

Both the courts, therefore, failed to meet the strict legal standard for imposing capital punishment, said the bench.

“We direct that the hangman’s noose be taken off the appellant-convict’s neck, and instead that he remains in prison till the end of his days given by God Almighty,” Live Law quoted the bench as saying.

The convict, Ramesh A Naika, was a former manager at Punjab National Bank and was accused of murdering his two children in June 2010 after a dispute with his wife’s family about the relationship of his sister-in-law with her co-worker.

The prosecution said that Naika allegedly first killed his sister-in-law and mother-in-law in Tumkur district and dumped their...

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