Punjab & Haryana HC Commutes Death Sentence to 50-Year Minimum Life Term for Rape and Murder of Six-Year-Old

Upholding conviction under Section 302 IPC and Section 6 POCSO Act, the Division Bench commuted the death sentence while imposing a 50-year minimum actual sentence and enhanced fines totalling Rs 73 lakh as compensation to the victim's family.

A Division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court at Chandigarh, comprising Justice Anoop Chitkara and Justice Ramesh Chander Dimri, has commuted the double death sentence awarded to Anand Singh — convicted for the rape and murder of a girl-child who was six years, eleven months, and fourteen days old — to a life sentence with a stipulation that he shall not be released unless he has served a minimum of fifty actual years under Section 302 IPC. For the rape offence under Section 6 of the POCSO Act, the bench sentenced him to twenty-three years' rigorous imprisonment. The conviction on all counts, including kidnapping under Section 363 IPC and causing disappearance of evidence under Section 201 IPC, was upheld in its entirety. The bench dismissed Murder Reference No. 6 of 2023 as a consequence of commutation and partly allowed Criminal Appeal CRA-D-1055-2023 filed by the convict.

The Crime and the Trial Court's Finding

On 24 May 2021, Anand Singh, then aged 27 years, took advantage of the parents' departure for work at a tile plant in Mundkati, District Palwal, Haryana. He allured and abducted the victim — whom the bench refers to throughout its judgment as “Laadli” — to an isolated agricultural field, where he raped her at both orifices, throttled her to death, and concealed her dead body in a pit measuring eight feet by eight feet and five feet deep.

The victim's father filed a written complaint with the SHO of Police Station Mundkati the same evening. The FIR was registered at 11:05 PM on 24 May 2021. The next day, 25 May 2021, the father filed a second complaint naming Anand Singh, who had not gone to work that day. Anand Singh was arrested from Mundkati Chowk on 25 May 2021. A Mobile FSL team reached the crime scene at 1:00 PM on 25 May 2021 and observed Laadli's dead body in the pit. The FSL's crime scene report recorded that the girl was tied by the neck to a sheesham tree trunk using a white kurta with a floral design, was naked, and had bloodstained anal and vaginal discharge.

A board of doctors conducted the post-mortem. Their report recorded a ligature mark on the neck, a 1.5 cm laceration perianally with a rectal tear, a ruptured hymen, swollen labia majora, and a complete perianal tear. The cause of death was stated to be asphyxia resulting from a constricting force on the neck, ante-mortem in nature and sufficient to cause death in the ordinary course of nature.

The Special Court (Fast Track), Palwal, framed charges on 23 September 2021 under Sections 366-A, 302, and 201 IPC, Section 6 of the POCSO Act, and Sections 3(1)(w)(i) and 2(v) of the SC/ST Act. The trial court convicted Anand Singh on 28 July 2023 under Sections 302, 363, and 201 IPC and Section 6 of the POCSO Act, and sentenced him to death on the next day, finding the case fell within the rarest of rare category. The trial court sent the matter to the High Court under Section 366 CrPC for confirmation of the death sentence. The convict also filed his own criminal appeal under Section 374(2) CrPC.

Investigation Lapses the Bench Recorded

The bench identified several significant failures in the investigation and trial, while making clear that none of them ultimately prejudiced the accused or affected the chain of guilt.

The victim's father, PW-24, was illiterate and could only sign in broken Devnagari script. A perusal of his first complaint, Ext PW24/1, showed writing in a flowing hand, pointing to someone proficient in writing — not the father. The bench found this to be fabrication by the investigating agency, though it had no bearing on the outcome since PW-24 was not a witness to the incident itself.

The FIR was received by the Judicial Magistrate on 26 May 2021 at 10:47 AM, a delay of approximately 35 hours from registration. The bench noted this raised a suspicion of ante-dating but would not benefit the accused, as he was not named in the FIR.

Neither the Public Prosecutor nor either of the two trial judges asked Laadli's parents to identify her clothing — the white kurta (MO/1) and the blue lower (MO/2) — when they testified. The bench placed this failure squarely on the Public Prosecutor and the trial judges, not the investigating officers. It invoked Section 165 of the Indian Evidence Act, which empowers a judge to put questions to discover proper proof of relevant facts, and observed: Every trial is a ship, which must mark to the shores, and when she is in troubled waters, the Trial Judge must be the last man off. The lapse did not prejudice the accused because the clothes were connected to the crime scene through the FSL team's report and the video recorded at the scene.

Most critically, the bench found that the accused's disclosure statement, Ext PW23/3, was fabricated. The FSL mobile unit reached the crime scene at 1:00 PM on 25 May 2021 and found Laadli's dead body. Multiple witnesses, including PW-6 Munna Lal and PW-12 ASI Munni, confirmed the dead body was already recovered before 2:00 PM. The accused, however, was arrested only between 4:00 and 5:00 PM as per the investigating officer's cross-examination. The disclosure statement was a typed document in Devnagari script, yet the prosecution produced no evidence of a laptop, printer, or UPS being part of the investigation kit. The bench concluded the disclosure statement was concocted after the body had already been discovered by the police.

The Evidence That Proved Guilt

With the disclosure statement excluded, the prosecution's case rested on two pillars: last-seen evidence and DNA evidence.

PW-8 Lachhi, a local shopkeeper, testified that on 24 May 2021 at 8:00 AM, Anand Singh came to his stall with the victim and purchased two packets of biscuits before leaving with her. She was never seen alive thereafter. In cross-examination, the credibility of this testimony was not dented. The bench found PW-8 to be a disinterested witness with no enmity toward the accused and no closeness to the victim's family. This established the last-seen circumstance and shifted the burden under Section 106 of the Indian Evidence Act to the accused to explain what had happened to Laadli after he left with her.

The DNA analysis proved decisive. The FSL laboratory at Madhuban prepared its report on 31 May 2023. Y-STR analysis showed that the DNA profile of stains on the cloth piece (item 1A, the kurta MO/1), the underwear (item 6), and the pyjami (item 8, MO/2) matched the DNA profile obtained from the accused's blood sample (item 7). The bench set out the chain of custody in tabular detail across multiple exhibits and found all seals intact at every link. The forensic evidence established that the accused's semen was present on the kurta used to tie Laadli to the tree and on the lower garment recovered from beneath her dead body.

The accused denied everything in his Section 313 CrPC statement, claiming false implication and alleging that his blood sample taken for COVID-19 testing had been used to fabricate DNA evidence. He led no evidence in defence. The bench, applying the standard from Deonandan Mishra v. The State of Bihar and Hanumant v. The State of Madhya Pradesh, found that the accused's failure to explain a fact within his special knowledge was an additional link in the chain.

The bench also addressed the presence of smegma noted in the accused's medical examination conducted at 9:42 PM on 25 May 2021. Citing medical jurisprudence, it found that smegma takes approximately 24 hours to accumulate. Since the examination was conducted at least 30 hours after the minimum possible time of the rape, the presence of smegma could not rule out penetration and did not assist the accused.

Having surveyed the evidence, the bench concluded: the chain of circumstances was complete, concrete, and led to the sole inference of Anand Singh's guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Conviction under Sections 302, 363, and 201 IPC and Section 6 of the POCSO Act was upheld.

The Sentencing Analysis

The bench then turned to whether the death sentence should be confirmed or commuted.

A psychological and sociological assessment filed by the State indicated the convict had normal behaviour, maintained eye contact, had a reaction time to questions that was normal, and an average IQ of 95. The report stated: “No overt psychopathology present that can suggests problem in psychological, behavioral and mental health.”

The bench surveyed a large body of Supreme Court precedent on the rarest of rare doctrine, including Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab, Machhi Singh v. State of Punjab, Santosh Kumar Satishbhushan Bariyar v. State of Maharashtra, and Rajendra Pralhadrao Wasnik v. State of Maharashtra. It also reviewed a series of cases in which the Supreme Court had commuted death sentences where the victim was a child below twelve years of age — including cases involving victims aged seven, six, five, four, and three years — and imposed instead life imprisonment running to the end of natural life or a minimum fixed term.

The bench observed that the murder appeared to have been committed in the aftermath of panic to destroy evidence of the rape, rather than as a premeditated act. It identified faulty investigation and the quality of evidence at certain points as factors creating residual doubt insufficient for the irreversible sentence of capital punishment. The bench placed the case on the razor's edge between the categories of rarest of rare and rare.

On the rape sentence, the bench applied what it described as a descending scale model in the absence of sentencing guidelines: the younger the victim, the higher the sentence; the more perpetrators, the higher the sentence. With the victim under seven years of age and a single perpetrator, the bench fixed the proportionate sentence for the POCSO offence at twenty-three years of rigorous imprisonment.

Outcome

The bench modified the sentence as follows. For murder under Section 302 IPC: rigorous imprisonment for life, with the convict not to be released unless he has served a minimum actual sentence of fifty years without counting remissions; fine enhanced to Rs 50,00,000 (rupees fifty lakh), to be paid as compensation to the victim's family after deduction; default sentence of 500 days' simple imprisonment. For rape under Section 6 of the POCSO Act: rigorous imprisonment for twenty-three years; fine enhanced to Rs 23,00,000 (rupees twenty-three lakh), to be paid as compensation; default sentence of 230 days' simple imprisonment. Sentences under Sections 363 and 201 IPC of seven years' rigorous imprisonment each, with fines of Rs 5,000, were upheld; the default sentence for each was reduced to one day's simple imprisonment. All substantive sentences are to run concurrently. The period already undergone from arrest shall be set off under Section 428 CrPC.

The trial court's compensation of Rs 30 lakh under the Victim Compensation Scheme 2020 was partially restructured: the State is directed to pay up to Rs 15 lakh; any amount already paid by the State beyond Rs 15 lakh shall be refunded from compensation recovered from the convict; the balance shall be distributed equally among the victim's parents and siblings surviving at the time of disbursement.

Murder Reference No. 6 of 2023 was dismissed consequent upon commutation. Criminal Appeal CRA-D-1055-2023 was partly allowed on the terms set out in the judgment. The default sentences in fine are to run consecutively. The trial court is directed to order destruction of case property six months after the judgment, subject to any directions from the Supreme Court if an appeal is filed.