Orissa HC commutes convict’s death penalty in double murder

The Orissa High Court Wednesday commuted the death sentence of a man to life imprisonment in a double murder case of 2019, saying that ‘it is well settled law that the possibility of reformation and rehabilitation of the convict is an important factor which has to be taken into account as a mitigating circumstance before sentencing him to death’.

- 

A division bench of Justices BP Routray and Chittaranjan Dash, taking note of the positive report of the jail authorities regarding the convict, Niranjan Mallik, in death row, commuted the capital punishment awarded by a lower court to life term.

“Taking into consideration the report of the jail authority in entirety, it cannot be said that there is no possibility of the convict being reformed and rehabilitated, foreclosing the alternative of a lesser sentence,” the bench observed.