New Delhi, December 18
Just two days before the brutal gang-rape of a 23-year-old girl in Delhi and the spontaneous national outrage against the assailants, the Supreme Court had held that the quantum of sentence in criminal cases should be based mainly on “proportionality and deterrence.”

Issuing a set of five guidelines for the trial courts to help them sentence the convicts to right duration of jail terms, a Bench comprising Justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana Prakash Desai ruled that “the sentence must be commensurate with the seriousness or gravity of the offence.”

“One of the factors relevant for judging the seriousness of the offence is the consequences resulting from” the crime, the SC held.

The question of consequences of criminal action could be relevant from both a proportionality and deterrence standpoint. Further, unintended consequences, if they could be foreseen, were an aggravating factor for awarding higher sentence, the Bench explained.

The SC issued the guidelines while adjudicating a case relating to the death of 31 persons after consuming illicit liquor in Kerala in October 2000. The Bench pointed out that the state laws relating to such crimes provided for sentences ranging from just one day to 10 years, leaving it to the “discretion of the court to fix the exact sentence having regard to the facts and circumstances of a particular case.”

It may be noted that even Section 376(2-g) dealing with gang-rape prescribed sentences ranging from not less than 10 years to life term, but vested in the court the discretion of awarding sentences for less than 10 years citing “adequate and special reasons” in the judgment.

Pointing out that “giving punishment to the wrongdoer is at the heart of the criminal justice delivery,” the Bench lamented that “but in our country, it is the weakest part of the administration of criminal justice.”

“There are no legislative or judicially laid down guidelines to assist the trial court in meting out the just punishment to the accused” after conviction, the SC noted while coming out with the new yardstick.

“In a proportionality analysis, it is necessary to assess the seriousness of an offence in order to determine the commensurate punishment for the offender. The seriousness of an offence depends, apart from other things, also upon its harmfulness,” the Bench explained.

Applying its own yardstick, the SC upheld the enhancement of the two-year jail term awarded by the trial court to one of the vendors of spurious liquor to five years by the Kerala High Court. Although the deaths were an unintended consequence in the case, the vendor should have been aware that spurious liquor could prove to be fatal, the Bench explained.