Machhi Singh v State of Punjab (1983)

Bachan Singh gave the formula; Machhi Singh gave the categories. It is the case that tells a court what kind of murder may fall within the rarest of rare class, and it is the case examiners expect you to reproduce head by head.

It matters equally for its justification of the death penalty by community sentiment, which is the most fully argued statement of that position in Indian law, and which is where an answer can show critical judgment rather than mere recall.

A feud between two families produced tragic consequences. Seventeen lives were lost in a series of five incidents which occurred in quick succession in five different villages, situated near each other in Punjab, on the night between 12 and 13 August 1977. The seventeen who died and the three who were injured included men, women and children related to one Amar Singh and his sister Piaro Bai.

Machhi Singh and eleven companions, close relatives and associates, were prosecuted in five sessions cases, one for each village in which killings took place, with Machhi Singh the common accused at each trial and the composition of his co-accused differing from trial to trial. Of those found guilty, four were awarded death and nine were sentenced to imprisonment for life. The convictions and sentences gave rise to five murder references and fourteen appeals before the High Court of Punjab and Haryana, which heard each appeal separately but disposed of them by a common judgment.

Motive: reprisal.

The common evidential criticism in every appeal was that it was a dark night, that electricity had not reached the villages, and that identification rested on the light of a lantern hanging in the courtyard where the victims slept on cots, which could not be sufficient. The criticism was rejected: villagers living where electricity has not reached get accustomed to seeing things in lantern light, so their eyesight is conditioned and their powers of seeing are not diminished; and in any event identification posed no serious problem, since the accused were known to the witnesses through a long-standing family feud and had not covered their faces, so they could be identified by facial features, build and gait.

In what class of case may the death sentence be imposed consistently with the rarest of rare rule laid down in Bachan Singh?

The Court set the question between two extremes: the protagonists of the eye-for-an-eye philosophy demand death-for-death, while the humanists press for death-in-no-case; and the synthesis is the rarest-of-rare formula.

Why does the community not endorse the humanistic approach?

• First, the reverence-for-life argument turned around. The humanistic edifice is itself constructed on the foundation of the reverence-for-life principle. When a member of the community violates that very principle by killing another member, society may not feel itself bound by the shackles of the doctrine.
• Second, the debt to the community. Every member is able to live in safety without his life being endangered because of the protective arm of the community and the rule of law it enforces; the very existence of the rule of law and the fear of being brought to book deter those who have no scruples in killing others if it suits their ends. Every member owes a debt to the community for that protection. When ingratitude is shown instead of gratitude by killing a member of the community which protects the murderer himself from being killed, or when the community feels that for the sake of self-preservation the killer has to be killed, the community may withdraw the protection by sanctioning the death penalty.
• But not in every case. It may do so only in the rarest of rare case, when its collective conscience is so shocked that it will expect the holders of the judicial power centre to inflict the death penalty irrespective of their personal opinion as regards the desirability or otherwise of retaining the death penalty.

The community may entertain such a sentiment when the crime is viewed from the platform of the motive for, or the manner of commission of, the crime, or its anti-social or abhorrent nature.

I. Manner of commission of the murder. Where the murder is committed in an extremely brutal, grotesque, diabolical, revolting or dastardly manner so as to arouse intense and extreme indignation of the community. For instance: (i) where the house of the victim is set aflame with the end in view to roast him alive in the house; (ii) where the victim is subjected to inhuman acts of torture or cruelty in order to bring about his or her death; (iii) where the body of the victim is cut into pieces or dismembered in a fiendish manner.

II. Motive for commission of the murder. Where the murder is committed for a motive which evinces total depravity and meanness. For instance: (a) where a hired assassin commits murder for the sake of money or reward; (b) where a cold-blooded murder is committed with a deliberate design in order to inherit property or to gain control over the property of a ward or a person under the murderer's control, or over whom the murderer is in a dominating position or a position of trust; (c) where a murder is committed in the course of betrayal of the motherland.

III. Anti-social or socially abhorrent nature of the crime. (a) where the murder of a member of a Scheduled Caste or minority community is committed not for personal reasons but in circumstances which arouse social wrath — for instance to terrorise such persons and frighten them into fleeing from a place; (b) in cases of bride burning and what are known as dowry deaths, or where murder is committed in order to remarry for the sake of extracting dowry once again, or to marry another woman on account of infatuation.

IV. Magnitude of the crime. Where the crime is enormous in proportion — for instance multiple murders, of all or almost all the members of a family, or of a large number of persons of a particular caste, community or locality.

V. Personality of the victim of the murder. Where the victim is (a) an innocent child who could not have provided, and has not provided, even an excuse, much less a provocation, for murder; (b) a helpless woman, or a person rendered helpless by old age or infirmity; (c) a person over whom the murderer is in a position of domination or trust; (d) a public figure generally loved and respected by the community for the services rendered by him, murdered for political or similar reasons other than personal reasons.

1. The extreme penalty of death need not be inflicted except in the gravest cases of extreme culpability.
2. Before opting for the death penalty, the circumstances of the offender also require to be taken into consideration along with the circumstances of the crime.
3. Life imprisonment is the rule and death sentence an exception. Death must be imposed only when life imprisonment appears to be an altogether inadequate punishment having regard to the relevant circumstances of the crime, and provided, and only provided, the option to impose a sentence of imprisonment for life cannot be conscientiously exercised having regard to the nature and circumstances of the crime and all the relevant circumstances.
4. A balance sheet of aggravating and mitigating circumstances has to be drawn up, the mitigating circumstances being accorded full weightage, and a just balance struck before the option is exercised.

To apply those guidelines the following questions may be asked and answered:

(a) Is there something uncommon about the crime which renders a sentence of imprisonment for life inadequate and calls for a death sentence? (b) Are the circumstances of the crime such that there is no alternative but to impose the death sentence even after according maximum weightage to the mitigating circumstances which speak in favour of the offender?

If, upon taking an overall global view of all the circumstances in the light of those propositions and the answers to those questions, the circumstances are such that death is warranted, the court would proceed to do so.

On the facts, the reasons given by the High Court for imposing death on Machhi Singh included that the killings were cold-blooded, that the victims were helpless and undefended, and that their only fault was that they were the immediate family of Amar Singh; that the offence was of an exceptionally depraved and heinous character; that the manner of its execution and its design put it at the level of extreme atrocity and cruelty; and that the deceased woman and her children had offered no offence to the assailants.

The categories look like a code, and that creates a tension with Bachan Singh's refusal to standardise. The Supreme Court has itself supplied the answer: in Machhi Singh the Court tried to indicate the type of cases which may fall within the exceptional class without attempting to introduce rigidity, and it would not be fair to read the decision as an attempt to fetter judicial discretion; even in cases of the type indicated, circumstances may vary, which would necessitate a different approach.

Allauddin Mian is the proof. There two infants were killed with farsas; on the Machhi Singh categories that is head V(a) and arguably head I. The death sentences were nonetheless converted to life, because the motive was obscure, the killings were not for gain, the target was the father and the killing of the infants was not in the contemplation of any accused, and the girls were victims of the offenders' frustration at the escape of their target. The mere fact that infants are killed, without more, is not sufficient to bring the case within the rarest of rare category.

- Reproduce the five heads with their illustrations. This is one of the few places in the paper where a structured list is exactly what is wanted. - Give the two questions, which are the operative test, and the four propositions, which are the framework. A candidate who gives only the categories has given half the case. - Do not present the categories as a code. State that they indicate types without introducing rigidity, and prove it with Allauddin Mian. - Use the community-conscience reasoning critically. It rests on the premise that the community may withdraw its protection; ask whether a court is well placed to know what the collective conscience holds, and connect that to Bachan Singh's own warning that the perception of community standards may vary from Judge to Judge, and to the American experience in Furman. - Connect head III(b) to Module 2. Bride burning and dowry death enter the rarest of rare categories here, and the same conduct is the subject of sections 498-A and 304-B of the Penal Code and of section 113-A of the Evidence Act. That connection between the causes module and the punishment module is exactly the kind of thread that earns marks. </content>