New Delhi, August 4
The Supreme Court has awarded life sentence to three persons in an honour killing case, in which six members of a family were gunned down but said the accused deserved a capital punishment.

The apex court, however, refrained from awarding death penalty to Master Krishna, Ram Sewak and Kishori as the incident was two decades old and slammed the High Court for acquitting them by rejecting the testimonies of a child and another witness.

“There is no doubt that killing six persons and wiping out almost the whole family on the flimsy ground of saving the honour of the family would fall within the rarest of rare case evolved by this court and, therefore, the trial court was perfectly justified in imposing capital punishment on the respondents.

“However, this court also notices that the incident had roughly taken place 20 years ago i.e. on August 10/11, 1991. Further, the High Court had acquitted the respondents by a judgment dated April 12, 2002. After this to date, nothing adverse against any respondent is reported to this court,” a Bench of Justices HS Bedi and JM Panchal said in a judgment.