Supreme Court Supports Bombay High Court’s Decision to Change Death Penalty to Life Imprisonment for Convicts in BPO Employee Rape and Murder Case.
The Supreme Court has supported a decision by the Bombay High Court that changed the death sentences of two men involved in the 2007 Pune BPO employee gang-rape and murder case to a life sentence of 35 years. This change was made due to a significant delay in carrying out the executions. A panel of Justices Abhay S Oka, Ahsanuddin Amanullah, and Augustine George Masih rejected an appeal from the Maharashtra government against the High Court’s ruling. The two men, Purushottam Borate and Pradeep Kokade, were scheduled for execution on June 24, 2019, but the High Court ordered on June 21, 2019, that the execution should be postponed until further notice. On July 29, 2019, the High Court allowed the convicts to pause their death sentences.
The High Court noted that the delay in carrying out the death penalty was excessive and unreasonable. It stated that the delay could have been avoided if the mercy petitions and execution processes had been handled more urgently. The court pointed out that both the state and central governments had caused unnecessary delays in processing the mercy petitions. It emphasized that when the right to life and personal liberty, as protected by Article 21 of the Constitution of India, is involved, all parties, including the Executive, the courts, and the President and Governor, share equal responsibility.
Any delay by the state or central government would violate the basic rights of the convicts, the court stated. “The actual execution of the death penalty is the responsibility of the state government. They must set a date and issue a death warrant,” the ruling explained. Simply sending letters to the sessions court to request a date for the execution does not fulfill this responsibility, it noted. “In this case, we change the death penalty to a life sentence of 35 years, taking into account the time the petitioners have already spent in prison,” the High Court concluded.
On November 1, 2007, a 22-year-old Wipro BPO employee took a company cab to her night shift in a Pune suburb. The driver, Borate, along with his friend Kokade, altered the route and drove her to a secluded area, where they raped and strangled her with her ‘dupatta’. They also mutilated her face. In March 2012, both were convicted and sentenced to death by a sessions court for kidnapping, raping, and murdering her. The High Court upheld the sentence in September 2012, and the Supreme Court confirmed it in May 2015.
