As the nation is debating the death penalty to three convicts in Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, the Supreme Court has issued show cause notice to a man from Utter Pradesh why his life sentence should not be enhanced to capital punishment for brutal murder of his wife and four minor children.
“Issue notice to the respondent (convict Alok Verma) as to why the life sentence awarded to him by the Allahabad high court should not be enhanced to death sentence. Issue notice also on the application (of UP government) for condoning the delay in filing the appeal,” a bench of Justices Markandey Katju and C.K. Prasad in their order said.
The trial court though had awarded death sentence to Verma but the HC despite recording the murder as “gruesome” reduced it to life imprisonment citing his financial condition as a reason, which the apex court termed as “strange”.
He had murdered his wife Shikha and three sons aged 10, 8 and 5 years and a two-year-old daughter stabbing them with knife and also using axe to kill them in a frenzied manner in July 2005 with the help of a friend.
Verma’s fifth child Priyanka, who survived the attack was the eyewitness to the “ghastly” crime. The apex court in its order passed on Friday, has given a vivid description of the multiple wounds caused to the small children.
“Prima facie, we find the reasoning of the HC to be strange. Merely because a person is in financial crisis does not mean that he is at liberty to commit the ghastly and gruesome murders,” the top court judges said.
“It appears that the wife of the accused was of a noble character who tried to reform him but rather than being reformed, he committed these monstrous crimes. We fail to understand how the HC could reduce the death sentence in these circumstances,” they said.
The reason for the multiple murders was Shikha’s persistent efforts to reform her husband, who used to indulge in petty crimes like gambling and bootlegging. But the immediate cause proved to be her persistent admonishment of her husband for his involvement in a kidnapping case after he had come out of jail on serving a year’s imprisonment. In order to teach a lesson to his wife, he had brought one of his “goon” friend to his house on July 7, 2005 and committed the ghastly crime.