The Orissa High Court on Tuesday commuted the death sentence awarded to Sanjeet Dash for the murder of his wife and the attempted murder of his six-year-old daughter. The Division Bench comprising Justice Manash Ranjan Pathak and Justice Sashikanta Mishra found that although the act was extremely barbaric, the trial court had proceeded on highly emotive considerations rather than conducting a proper legal evaluation of aggravating and mitigating circumstances.
The court stated that while much of what was narrated by the trial court could not be disputed from a moral or ethical point of view, an emotional or moral approach has no place in law. It emphasized that law moves on hard facts alone and expressed its inability to concur with an approach bereft of legal reasoning.
The Bench observed that in its zeal to label the case as 'rarest of rare', the trial court ignored the legal requirement to balance aggravating and mitigating circumstances and embarked upon a moral journey laced with highly emotive considerations.
On June 9, 2022, Sanjeet Dash allegedly assaulted his wife, Saraswati Dash, who had given birth to a girl child just three days prior, with a kitchen knife, inflicting 49 stab wounds that caused her death. He also slit the throat of his six-year-old daughter. After fleeing the scene, he was apprehended by police the same evening near a garden.
The post-mortem report confirmed 49 stab injuries on different parts of the deceased's body, which the autopsy surgeon opined were homicidal in nature and caused by a sharp cutting weapon like a knife.
The prosecution relied on the testimony of the minor daughter, who unequivocally stated that her father killed her mother with a knife and slit her throat. The mother of the accused testified that he had confessed to killing the deceased and cutting the throat of his daughter. The sister-in-law of the accused also corroborated this evidence.
The 2nd Additional Sessions Judge, Bhubaneswar, had found the accused guilty of murdering his wife, attempting to murder his minor daughter, and inflicting grievous hurt with a dangerous weapon. The trial court deemed the case 'rarest of rare' and awarded the death sentence for murder, along with sentences under other charges.
The case was submitted to the High Court under Section 366 of the CrPC, and the appeal filed by the accused against the conviction and sentence was tagged with the aforesaid reference.
The High Court, after reviewing the evidence and legal principles, concluded that the trial court's reliance on moral outrage rather than a dispassionate balancing of circumstances vitiated the sentencing process. Accordingly, it commuted the death sentence, though it did not specify the substituted sentence in the available excerpts.