Sayima Ahmad
The Madhya Pradesh High Court on Monday, August 31, commuted the death sentence of a 31-year-old man convicted of raping and murdering a two-year-five-month-old girl in the state’s Shahdol district, suggesting that the case did not meet the “rarest of rare” requirement to justify capital punishment.
While hearing the case appeal against a judgment passed by a special judge under the POCSO Act and sentenced the convict to death on January 13, 2026, the division bench of Jabalpur comprising Justice Vivek Agarwal and Justice Avanindra Kumar Singh modified the prior judementment and awarded the accused identified as Ram Narayan alias Bhanu Dhimar to imprisonment for at least 25 years without remission, ruling that “human life is a precious gift of God” and should not be taken away, reported by lawbeat.
Court ruling
During the hearing, the court maintained that Ram Narayan’s crime was fully proven through investigation and autopsy and acknowledged that the cruelty was inflicted by him upon the child incapable of resistance or articulation. However, the bench also considered that the accused had no prior criminal record and was around 32 years old at the time of the crime.
The judges also urged that the accused belonged to an economically weaker background, and had been socially boycotted for marrying outside his caste and stated that his custody had remained “normal and disciplined”.
While referring to several judgments passed by the Supreme Court frequently commuting death sentences to life terms for younger, first-time offenders, the judges concluded the hearing by passing final verdict stating “The accused with no prior criminal records cannot be treated to be a menace to the society requiring ‘rarest of rare’ punishment and human life is a precious gift of God and the bench commuted his sentence from death to one of life imprisonment for at least 25 years without any remission.”
Background of the case
The incident that took place in Chirhati village in the Khairaha area of Shahdol district, Madhya Pradesh, dates back to March 1, 2023, when the victim child’s mother had left her sleeping at the accused’s house that night and gone to collect coal at a nearby colliery with other family members.
Upon returning, the mother found her toddler daughter lying naked and bleeding, with visible injuries on her face and private parts. The victim was rushed to the nearby hospital, where she was referred to Shahdol Medical College, where she battled for her life for six days and ultimately died on March 7, 2023.
During the police investigation, the victim’s lower garment was recovered from the accused’s house along with a bedsheet on his memorandum statement. DNA testing confirmed that the garment matched the victim’s DNA source swabs.
A postmortem examination, which was conducted by Dr Amreen Khan and Dr Pawan A Wankhede, revealed a skull fracture along with vaginal and anal injuries. The doctors concluded the autopsy results, stating that the death was caused by a combination of head injury and brutal sexual assault.
The investigation also led to the arrest of three other people; among them, the two accused identified as Rajkumar Dhimar and Pinky Dhimar were convicted by the trial court only for criminally intimidating the victim’s mother under Section 506 Part-II IPC and the third person named Bitani Dhimar was acquitted after DNA reports failed to match him to the crime.
Similar verdict by MP court
However, this is not an isolated case where the MP court has commuted a person accused in a rape or murder case. In recent times, the state court has passed a similar disturbing pattern of verdicts while arguing that the case findings do not satisfy the “rarest of rare”.
In May 2026, the same Jabalpur bench commuted the death sentence of the accused in the rape and murder case of a 6-year-old girl. The court sentenced the accused, identified as Ajay Wadiwa, to 25 years of imprisonment instead of the death penalty, while arguing that the case does not completely fall under the ‘rarest of rare’ category and the accused belongs to a weaker social background.
On 19 July 2026, the Gwalior division bench comprising Justices GS Ahluwalia and Anuradha Shukla commuted the death sentence of a man identified as Kallu Rathore, convicted of raping and murdering a 9-year-old girl, to imprisonment, urging that while the crime was “heinous”, it did not warrant capital punishment as the case did not fit the criteria to be adjudged “rarest of rare”.
On 27 July 2026, the same bench upheld the conviction of a man for the rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl, while commuting his death sentence to imprisonment for the remainder of his natural life, holding that the case did not fall within the “rarest of rare” category.
On August 24, the MP HC bench, comprising Justices Subodh Abhyankar and Alok Awasthi, upheld the conviction of an accused for the abduction and murder of a seven-year-old girl, while commuting his death sentence to imprisonment without remission, arguing his documented history of mental illness and jail conduct.
