Rajendra Prasad v State of Uttar Pradesh (1979)

Section 354(3) of the 1973 Code says that when a court sentences a murderer to death, the judgment must state "the special reasons for such sentence". It does not say what a special reason is. This is the case in which a majority of three judges tried to answer that question — and answered it in a way that shifted the whole focus of death sentencing from the crime to the criminal.

Three appeals were heard together, each from a death sentence confirmed by a High Court. In each, the courts below had found the killing brutal enough to justify death. The majority commuted all three to life imprisonment. Justice Sen dissented in all three, and his dissent is as examinable as the majority: he held that the Court could not lawfully lay down a restrictive definition of "special reasons" at all.

The case is also the one counsel relied on in Bachan Singh v State of Punjab (1980), where it was argued that neither a previous murder conviction nor the heinousness of a triple murder could be a special reason. Read the two cases together. (The citator note printed with the report marks this decision "O" — overruled — against AIR 1980 SC 898.)

Rajendra Prasad's case. Two families had a long-standing feud. The appellant, a son of one of the feuding elders, committed a murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. After some years in prison he was released on Gandhi Jayanti Day. On his return a minor incident reignited the feud and he stabbed two men several times; one of them died. Treating him as a "desperate character" who had killed a second time, the Sessions Court sentenced him to death and the High Court confirmed it. He had been under the death sentence since 1973.

Kunjukunju's case. The appellant, a married man with two children, developed a sexual relationship with a young woman and, to be free of his family, killed his wife and both children at night. The courts below called the act deliberate, cold-blooded and attended with considerable brutality, and treated that as the special reason for death.

Dubey's case. Following a quarrel over a family partition, the appellant, a young man of about 18 to 20, stabbed to death three members of the other branch of the family. The High Court refused to treat his youth as mitigating because it was a triple murder with each victim stabbed in the chest, and it fixed his age without medical evidence.

1. What are the "special reasons" required by s. 354(3) CrPC before a court may sentence a person convicted of murder to death?
2. Must those reasons relate to the crime, or to the criminal?
3. Did the courts below correctly find special reasons in each of the three appeals?
4. (Raised by the dissent) Can the Supreme Court, hearing an appeal on sentence, lawfully lay down a restrictive meaning of "special reasons"?

By majority (Krishna Iyer and Desai JJ), the appeals were allowed and each death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. The order reads: "In the light of the opinion of the majority the death sentence in each of these appeals is commuted to a sentence of imprisonment for life."

The legislative shift

The majority traced the history of s. 367(5) of the old Code and s. 354(3) of the new. Before 1955 death was the normal sentence for murder and a lesser sentence needed reasons; after 1955 courts were equally free to award either; the 1973 Code reversed the old rule. In the Court's words: "Formerly, capital punishment was to be imposed unless special reasons could be found to justify the lesser sentence." Under the 1973 Code, life imprisonment for murder is the rule and death the exception, for reasons to be stated.

Reading s. 354(3) through the Constitution

The Court held that "The only correct approach is to read into s.302 I.P.C. and s.354(3) Cr.P.C., the human rights and humane trends in the Constitution." Its conclusion on the meaning of special reasons:

"ordinarily, for murder a life-term is appropriate save where 'special reasons' are found for resort to total extinction of the right to life and farewell to fundamental rights. Public order and social security must demand it."

And: "the sacrifice of a life is sanctioned only if otherwise public interest, social defence and public order would be smashed irretrievably." A single murder, however gruesome, will seldom be enough: "One stroke of murder hardly qualifies for this drastic requirement, however gruesome the killing or pathetic the situation".

The guiding principle was put bluntly: "Never hang unless society or its members may probably lose more lives by keeping alive an irredeemable convict." And: "If rehabilitation is possible by long treatment in jail, if deterrence is possible by life-long prison terms, capital sentence may be misapplied."

Crime versus criminal

The heart of the majority's test: "'Special reasons' necessary for imposing death penalty must relate, not to the crime as such but to the criminal. The crime may be shocking and yet the criminal may not deserve death penalty." Special reasons "must be related to why the murderer must be hanged and why life imprisonment will not suffice."

The majority gave examples of cases where death might be justified: a hardened murderer, dacoit or armed robber who is beyond rehabilitation, a lethal economic offender, and those who treacherously kill officers charged with keeping the peace.

The three appeals

• Rajendra Prasad. "A second murder is not to be confounded with the persistent potential for murderous attacks by the murderer. This was not a menace to the social order but a specific family feud." Nothing on record showed he was beyond redemption, and the Court blamed the prison, which had done nothing to reform him: "Prisons are not human warehouses but humane retrieval homes." It added, as a further ground, the years he had spent with the death sentence hanging over him. Death was commuted to life, with a direction for "mental-moral healing courses" in prison.
• Kunjukunju. The courts below had looked only at the crime. "If the crime alone was the criterion, yes; but if the criminal was the target, no." There was nothing to show he was a social security risk beyond salvage. Commuted.
• Dubey. "It is illegal to award capital sentence without considering the correctional possibilities inside prison." The High Court had brushed aside his youth without medical evidence of age. The mitigating circumstances were collected in one sentence: "A family feud, an altercation, a sudden passion, although attended with extra-ordinary cruelty, young and malleable age, reasonable prospect of reformation and absence of any conclusive circumstance that the assailant is a habitual murderer or given to chronic violence-these catena of circumstances bearing on the offender call for the lesser sentence." Commuted.

The dissent (Sen J)

Sen J would have dismissed all three appeals. He held that "special reasons" cannot be put in a straight-jacket, and that the question of sentence must be left to the trial judge's discretion on the facts of each case. In his view there were special reasons in all three cases and "the High Courts were justified in confirming the death sentence passed under s. 368(a) of the Code." He also held that the Court should not commute a properly imposed death sentence on the footing that the executive might commute it anyway, since that would trench on the clemency powers under Articles 72 and 161.

Under s. 354(3) CrPC, life imprisonment is the normal sentence for murder and death is the exception. Read with Articles 14, 19 and 21, "special reasons" for death must relate to the criminal, not merely the crime: death is justified only where the offender is such a continuing threat to society that public order and social defence cannot be secured by life imprisonment. The brutality of the killing alone, a second murder arising out of a specific feud, or several deaths in one incident, do not by themselves amount to special reasons; the court must consider the offender's circumstances and the possibility of reform.

• Direct question: What are "special reasons" under s. 354(3) CrPC? Discuss with reference to the case law on the death penalty. Trace the shift from the old Code to the 1973 Code, give the majority's crime-versus-criminal test, then Sen J's dissent, then show how the issue went on to Bachan Singh.
• Problem question: an offender released after a life sentence for one murder kills again in the same family feud. Apply Rajendra Prasad: a second murder rooted in a specific feud is not by itself proof of a continuing menace to society, and the prison's failure to reform him is relevant.
• Penology link: use the case in answers on the reformative theory of punishment and prison reform — the majority treats recidivism as "an index of prison failure" and calls for therapy inside prisons.
• Remember the split: 2–1, with a strong dissent. Examiners reward students who state both views.