Supreme Court
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has said that compensation to the victim cannot be a ground for reducing the sentence. The court said that if payment of compensation becomes an option for reducing the sentence, it will have a “serious” impact on the criminal justice system. The court said that the result of this will be that the criminals will have a lot of money to escape justice, which will defeat the very purpose of criminal proceedings. Section 357 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) gives the court the power to award compensation to the victims while passing a judgment of conviction.
Supreme Court made a big comment
A bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Mishra said, “Compensation to the victim cannot be a ground for reducing the sentence imposed on the accused as compensation to the victim is not a punitive measure and is only compensatory in nature.”
The order of Gujarat High Court was challenged
The court said that the purpose of Section 357 of the CrPC is to assure the victim that they have not been forgotten in the criminal justice system. The court made this remark while hearing a petition filed by a person named Rajendra Bhagwanji Umrania. The petition challenged the order of the Gujarat High Court, in which the sentence of five years of two persons in a criminal case was reduced to four years. The court had also said that if the convicts pay Rs 2.50 lakh to the victim, then they will not have to serve even four years of sentence.
The Supreme Court said that 12 years have passed since the incident and the convicts have already deposited Rs 5 lakh. The bench said, “We are not in favour of ordering them to undergo additional punishment of four years. The court said, “However, we direct each defendant to deposit another Rs 5 lakh, i.e. a total of Rs 10 lakh, in addition to the amount already deposited in the lower court.
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