Periya double murder case not treated as rarest of rare by CBI special court

A CBI special court which awarded double lifer for ten convicts and five-year jail term for four others in the Periya double murder case did not find the case as rarest of rare. CBI prosecutor who expressed satisfaction over the sentence said that the court did not bring the case under the purview of rarest of rare and hence death penalty was not awarded to the convicts. 

Advocate Padmanabhan, who represented the parents of Congress workers Kripesh and Sarathlal PK, who were murdered in 2019, said that the brutal killings had jolted the conscience of the people and the quantum of sentence awarded to convicts was satisfying. He said that other decisions regarding filing an appeal in the case will be made after receiving copy of the judgement. Padmanbhan said that the Supreme Court had issued clear guidelines to determine a case as rarest of rare and this case was not treated as one.

The Supreme Court had proposed the rarest of rare doctrine in 1980 in the Bachan Singh case and later in the Machhi Singh case, the apex court laid down a set of criteria for assessing when a case could fall within the purview of rarest of rare. The criteria included manner of committing murder, motive for murder, socially heinous nature of crime, magnitude of the crime and personality of the victim of the murder, according to an article on the doctrine of rarest of rare published in Indian journal of integrated research in law.