Orissa HC Commutes Death Sentence to 35-Year Minimum After Finding Trial Court Relied on Emotion Over Law
The Orissa High Court confirmed conviction for wife-murder and partial acquittal for assault charges, but replaced the death sentence with life imprisonment carrying a 35-year remission bar.
A Division Bench of the High Court of Orissa at Cuttack, comprising Justice Manash Ranjan Pathak and Justice Sashikanta Mishra, on 25 August 2026 confirmed the murder conviction of Sanjeet Dash @ Banku for killing his wife with 49 stab wounds three days after she gave birth to their second child, while also partially setting aside the conviction and commuting the sentence of death to life imprisonment with a minimum custody period of 35 years before any consideration for remission. The court found that the trial court had substituted emotional and moral reasoning for the legally mandated balancing of aggravating and mitigating circumstances, and that the mitigating circumstances outweighed the aggravating ones—making the case fall short of the “rarest of rare” threshold. The bench disposed of the death reference registered as DSREF No. 3 of 2024 and the condemned prisoner's appeal registered as JCRLA No. 141 of 2024 together, arising from the judgment of the 2nd Additional Sessions Judge, Bhubaneswar in CT Case No. 322 of 2022.
The Crime and the Trial Court's Verdict
The prosecution's case was that on 9 June 2022, Sanjeet Dash killed his wife Saraswati @ Tikili inside their first-floor bedroom by stabbing her repeatedly with a kitchen knife, and thereafter slit the throat of their six-year-old daughter, Shree @ Pari. The deceased had given birth to their second daughter three days before the incident. Witnesses described frequent quarrels between husband and wife over money; the deceased worked as a senior nurse at SUM Hospital, Bhubaneswar, while the condemned prisoner was unemployed.
The informant was the deceased's brother, Sashikanta Dash, who reached the house after receiving a phone call and found his sister lying dead in a pool of blood. The elder daughter had already been taken to SUM Hospital in a critical condition. The FIR was registered as Bharatpur P.S. Case No. 237 under Sections 302, 307, 324, and 326 of the IPC. A charge-sheet was submitted on 7 October 2022.
The 2nd Additional Sessions Judge convicted the condemned prisoner of all four charges by judgment dated 30 July 2024. By order dated 1 August 2024, the trial court sentenced him to death under Section 302 IPC, imprisonment for life under Section 307 IPC, imprisonment for life under Section 326 IPC, and rigorous imprisonment of three years under Section 324 IPC, with all sentences to run concurrently. The trial court submitted the record to the High Court for confirmation under Section 366 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The condemned prisoner also independently filed an appeal.
The High Court's Independent Scrutiny of Evidence
The bench opened its analysis by reaffirming the settled position, drawing on the Supreme Court's judgment in Jumman v. State of Punjab (1956) 2 SCC 554, that a death reference requires the High Court to reappraise the entire evidence independently and arrive at its own conclusions, rather than merely assess whether the sessions court's findings were correct.
The prosecution examined 15 witnesses, proved 18 documents, and produced 8 material objects including the seized knife marked MO-1. The defence did not adduce any evidence, oral or documentary.
The bench identified three central questions in any murder case: whether the death was homicidal; who authored the crime; and whether the act amounted to murder under Section 300 IPC.
Homicidal death: The post-mortem report proved by autopsy surgeon PW-12, Dr. Laxmikanta Behera, listed 49 injuries across both vital and non-vital parts of the body. All were antemortem, caused by a sharp cutting weapon. Death was attributed to haemorrhage and shock from the combined effect of all injuries. Blood stains were found not only in the bedroom where the body was discovered but across several rooms, indicating the deceased had attempted to flee while the condemned prisoner continued the assault. The bench found only one possible conclusion: death was homicidal.
Authorship: The bench placed considerable weight on the testimony of PW-8, the injured six-year-old daughter who survived, after the trial court found her competent to testify. She stated plainly that her father killed her mother with a knife and also slit her throat, and she showed the court her neck wound. The defence argued she had not mentioned her father's role to the investigating officer under Section 161 CrPC. The bench examined the Section 161 statement and found the IO had only asked a general question about the incident, to which the child responded about her own injury; no direct question was put about her mother's death. The bench held that the omission could not discredit her court testimony.
The extra-judicial confession made by the condemned prisoner to his mother, PW-4 Kanaklata Dash, was the next significant piece. When PW-4 encountered him on the staircase after a phone call went unanswered, the condemned prisoner voluntarily told her he had killed his wife and slit his daughter's throat, and asked her to call the police. PW-5, wife of the condemned prisoner's younger brother, was present and fully corroborated this account. The bench noted that a mother speaking falsely against her own son was improbable, and that the confession was entirely voluntary, made spontaneously on seeing his mother. It accepted both the extra-judicial confession and the conduct of absconding thereafter as proving guilty mind.
The fingerprint report from the State Fingerprint Bureau matched two chance prints on the blood-stained knife with the condemned prisoner's fingerprints. The defence argued the fingerprint expert was never examined. The bench, relying on Shri Fulkumar v. Delhi Administration (1975) 1 SCC 797, held that examination of the expert is not mandatory when the accused does not seek it, and noted that the condemned prisoner admitted his fingerprints were taken when confronted under Section 313 CrPC. The condemned prisoner's wearing apparel also bore blood stains of group A, which was common to both him and the deceased. No injury was found on the condemned prisoner's body to explain the stains, pointing to the blood being the deceased's.
The bench also drew an adverse inference from the condemned prisoner's silence under Section 313 CrPC. He offered no explanation for any of the incriminating circumstances, relying instead on a general denial. The bench applied the principle from Debojit Pankika Charaideo Sonari v. State of Assam (2026 SCC OnLine SC 1336) that failure to explain facts within the accused's special knowledge constitutes an additional link in the chain of circumstances.
Murder Under Section 300 IPC: Whether the Act Crossed the Threshold
The bench criticised the trial court for not actually analysing whether the act amounted to murder within the meaning of Section 300 IPC, instead proceeding on assumption. The bench undertook that analysis itself.
The amicus curiae, Mr. Soura Chandra Mohapatra, Senior Advocate, argued that while 49 stab wounds were found, most were on limbs rather than vital organs; that the wounds were not deep, suggesting only the tip of the knife penetrated; and that the act may have been committed in blind rage following a domestic quarrel, bringing it within the exceptions to Section 300 IPC, particularly Exception 4 (sudden fight in heat of passion) and pointing toward Section 304 Part I rather than Section 302 IPC.
The bench rejected these arguments. On the depth and location of wounds, it held that where a body bears 49 stab injuries across both vital and non-vital parts, and the doctor certifies death from haemorrhage and shock from the combined effect of all injuries, there is no requirement to segregate injuries individually or identify any single fatal wound. Blood stains across multiple rooms showed the deceased attempted to flee and the condemned prisoner followed, continuing to stab. The bench found this consistent only with an intent to cause death.
On the provocation argument, the bench noted that the condemned prisoner himself said nothing about a quarrel in his Section 313 CrPC examination, and no suggestion of a prior quarrel on that day was put to any prosecution witness. The bench found no evidentiary foundation for Exception 1 or Exception 4. Applying Virsa Singh v. State of Punjab (AIR 1958 SC 465) and Rajwant Singh v. State of Kerala (AIR 1966 SC 1874), all four conditions distinguishing murder from culpable homicide under Section 300 IPC were found satisfied. The bench confirmed the conviction under Section 302 IPC.
Conviction for Assault on the Daughter: Section 307 Confirmed, Sections 324 and 326 Set Aside
The condemned prisoner had also been convicted under Section 307 (attempt to murder), Section 326 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapon), and Section 324 (voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapon) for slitting the throat of PW-8. The amicus argued that the same act could not sustain three separate convictions, and that the graver offence under Section 307 should subsume the other two.
The bench confirmed the Section 307 conviction. PW-8's testimony was direct: her father slit her throat with a knife. The medical officer PW-10 found an 8–9 cm incised wound on the throat with the larynx exposed, which he categorised as grievous. The bench held that an injury of that severity to the throat, inflicted with a knife immediately after killing the child's mother, could only reflect an intent to kill. It applied the principle from Sagayam v. State of Karnataka (2000) 4 SCC 454 that for Section 307, the presence of intent coupled with an overt act is sufficient even if the injury was not ultimately fatal.
However, the bench agreed with the amicus on the multiplicity of convictions. Section 71 IPC, read with its illustrations, bars multiple punishments for a single act that constitutes parts of one offence. The two injuries on PW-8 were part of the same transaction. Section 307 IPC, being the graver offence, subsumed the offences under Sections 326 and 324 IPC arising from the same act. The convictions under Sections 324 and 326 IPC were accordingly set aside.
The Sentence: Why the Death Penalty Did Not Survive
With conviction under Sections 302 and 307 IPC confirmed, the bench turned to sentence. The trial court had imposed death for the Section 302 IPC offence. The bench found serious methodological problems with that sentencing order.
The trial court had referred to the principles in Ramnaresh v. State of Chhattisgarh (2012) 4 SCC 257 governing the balance of aggravating and mitigating circumstances, but did not itself undertake that balancing exercise from the evidence. Instead, it reproduced what counsel had submitted about aggravating and mitigating factors, then dwelt extensively on the emotional and psychological trauma of the child victims and the victim's dignity. The bench held: The bench then conducted the balance-sheet analysis itself, drawing on Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab (1980) 2 SCC 684 and Machhi Singh v. State of Punjab (1983) 3 SCC 470. Aggravating circumstances found by the bench: Mitigating circumstances found by the bench: Weighing these, the bench concluded the mitigating circumstances outweighed the aggravating ones, and the case, though extremely barbaric and brutal, did not satisfy the “rarest of rare” threshold required for capital punishment. The bench then addressed the sentencing gap. Plain life imprisonment, it observed, can in practice translate to as little as 14 years before the condemned prisoner becomes eligible for consideration of premature release under Section 433 CrPC. Given that the occurrence was in 2022 and four years had already elapsed, the condemned prisoner could notionally seek remission after serving approximately 10 more years. The bench found it difficult to contemplate his returning home to his two daughters after that period—one of whom he had attempted to kill, and the other of whom had been born three days before her mother was murdered. Applying the expanded sentencing option recognised by the Supreme Court in Swamy Shraddananda (2) v. State of Karnataka (2008) 13 SCC 767—which identified the “vast hiatus between 14 years' imprisonment and death” that courts should be able to fill—the bench sentenced the condemned prisoner to life imprisonment with a specific direction that he shall not be eligible for consideration of remission unless he has served a minimum of 35 years in total custody. The period already undergone was directed to be set off. Before closing the judgment, the bench addressed compensation for the two minor daughters, now aged approximately 10 and 4 years. The District Legal Services Authority, Khurda, had already awarded Rs. 5 lakhs each to the children under the Victim Compensation Scheme. That amount had been refused by the paternal grandmother with whom the children reside. The bench directed the State to pay an additional Rs. 10 lakhs each to the child victims. All amounts—both those already awarded by the DLSA and the fresh direction—are to be kept in fixed deposit in a nationalised bank, preferably State Bank of India, Bhubaneswar, in the names of the children represented by the Secretary, DLSA, Khurda, until each child attains majority. The bench further directed the DLSA, Khurda to deploy Para-legal Volunteers, preferably women, to monitor the children's welfare at their residence and submit reports to the Chairman, DLSA once every six months until the children reach majority. The bench also placed on record its appreciation for the assistance of Mr. Soura Chandra Mohapatra, Senior Advocate, appointed as Amicus Curiae, and assessed his professional fee at Rs. 50,000/- to be paid by the Odisha State Legal Services Authority. Appreciation was also expressed for the Additional Government Advocate, Mr. Partha Sarathi Nayak. The Death Reference (DSREF No. 3 of 2024) was answered by confirming the conviction under Section 302 IPC but modifying the sentence of death to life imprisonment with a 35-year minimum before eligibility for remission. The Criminal Appeal (JCRLA No. 141 of 2024) was allowed in part. The convictions and sentences under Sections 302 and 307 IPC were confirmed. The convictions and sentences under Sections 324 and 326 IPC were set aside. The sentence of death for the Section 302 IPC offence was modified to life imprisonment carrying the 35-year remission bar.
The 35-Year Custody Minimum: Closing the Gap Between 14 Years and Death
Compensation for the Child Victims
Order