Courts played down Mehrauli murder-like body-chopping act in past

With Shraddha Walkar's father demanding death penalty for Aftab Poonawala, there have been several instances in the past where the courts have awarded capital punishment to the guilty even after refusing to treat cases of similar nature as the 'rarest of rare'.

Poonawala allegedly strangulated Shraddha and sawed her body into 35 pieces which he kept in a fridge for almost three weeks at his residence in Mehrauli in south Delhi in May this year, before dumping them across the city over several days.

Vikas Walkar on Friday demanded that the accused be hanged for killing his daughter.

The Delhi Police has been working to gather circumstantial evidence to firm up the case in court.

However, courts in the past have refrained from treating similar cases as 'rarest of rare', which enables judiciary to choose between a lifer and death penalty for the offence of murder under Section 302.

While commuting the death penalty in the infamous 1995 Tandoor murder case, the Supreme Court after analysing several judgements of previous cases, said,"...the manner in which the body is disposed of has not always persuaded this Court to impose the death penalty."

Sushil Sharma, a former Congress youth leader and Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), had shot his wife Naina Sahni with his licensed revolver on the night of July 2, 1995, taken her body to a restaurant, chopped it into pieces and tried to burn them in the restaurant's oven, leading the case to be popularly called the 'Tandoor murder case'.

The apex court held that many factors such as the age of the criminal, his social status, his background, whether he is a confirmed criminal or not, whether he had any antecedents etc, would have to be examined independently in each case.

Amarjit Singh Chandhiok, the then Additional Solicitor General (ASG) who appeared for the Delhi government, said, "I believe that prosecution in such cases fail to prove with facts and circumstantial evidence that the crime is of the rarest of rare nature. They often leave a loose link and the accused gets the benefit of doubt." In the Tandoor case, the prosecution could not establish that the body was chopped into pieces.

In 1990, Ravindra Trimbad murdered his eight-month-pregnant wife with the help of his family members for dowry and chopped her body into nine pieces before throwing the head in a shrub and stuffing the rest of the parts in a suitcase to dispose of.

Both the trial and the high court awarded death to Ravindra. However, the Supreme Court commuted it to life, saying, "Dowry death has ceased to belong to the species of killing. The increasing number of dowry deaths would bear this."

In a widely reported Anupama Gulati murder case, the Dehradun court awarded life imprisonment to the husband Rajesh Gulati who smothered her to death and chopped her body in 30 to 40 pieces using weapons like iron and stone cutter. Like Aftab, Gulati had also stored the body parts in a deep freezer.

In 2001, Santosh Kumar Satishbhushan kidnapped a boy with his friends for ransom and later killed him by strangulation with a rope. They cut up the boy’s body into several parts, put them into bags and dispose them of at different places. The SC commuted his death into a life sentence.

"I remember only one case of Biren Dutta who was hanged to death in 1956 for murdering his wife and chopping her body into multiple pieces. I think the judges take a lean view of the fact that the brutality has been done with the dead body and not when the person is alive," Anand S Jondhale, an SC lawyer said.

"In Indian law, body chopping comes under the destruction of evidence for which the accused can get a maximum punishment of seven years. It is the murder which will invite him life or death sentence," he added.

Mohit Mathur, senior advocate at the Delhi High Court said, "When the courts hear such cases, they don't see just one act. They have to see all circumstances and facts leading to the crime."

According to another SC lawyer, DK Garg, "Though sentencing often varies from courtroom to courtroom and judges to judges yet there is an impression that chopping a dead body is an act to destroy evidence out of fear of harsh punishment. Judges avoid the death sentence when they see even an iota of a chance of reformation of a criminal."

A section of psychologists, however, have a different take. "Chopping of a dead body is diabolic and such criminals cannot be reformed at all," Dr Aruna Broota, psychologist, claimed.

"I think in such cases judges should be assisted by a panel of psychologists and psychiatrists before they pass any judgement. Their kindheartedness put the society at danger," she added.