Overview
- The Division Bench of Justices Anoop Chitkara and Sukhvinder Kaur upheld the conviction but ruled the case fell just short of the 'rarest of rare' threshold.
- The court mandated a minimum of 50 years of actual imprisonment without remission for murder, plus 25 years under the POCSO Act, and fines totaling ₹75 lakh for the victim’s family.
- Judges cited a fabricated extra-judicial confession, contradictions in a key witness’s testimony, and non-examination of a material witness as factors against the death penalty.
- The bench found the killing occurred in panic to destroy evidence of rape rather than as a premeditated act.
- The judgment framed the crime as a wider systemic failure and set out a proportionality and incapacitation approach that links harsher terms to the victim’s age.