Tersem Singh vs State Of Punjab

TERSEM SINGH ..... APPELLANT

VERSUS

STATE OF PUNJAB ..... RESPONDENT

O R D E R

1. These appeals by way of special leave are

directed against the concurrent findings of the Sessions

Judge Jalandhar and of the High Court of Punjab and

Haryana whereby the appellant has been convicted and

sentenced to death for having murdered his wife and two

minor children on the 21st of September, 2007.

2. As per the prosecution story given by Piare Lal PW

his daughter Rajwinder Kaur had been married to Tarsem

Singh appellant about twelve years earlier. He was

present in his house in village Pandori, Masharkti

(District Jalandhar) when he received a message at about

11:00p.m. on the 21st September, 2007 from village

Khambra that a gas cylinder had burst in his daughter's

house and that his son-in-law Tarsem Singh had

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sustained injuries and his daughter Rajwinder Kaur and

his grand sons Harwinder Singh aged 8 years and

Gurvinder Singh aged 10 years, had been killed. Piare

Lal along with his wife and nephew Makhan Singh rushed

to village Khambra and on examining the site he

suspected that the appellant had killed his wife and

children by inflicting injuries on them and then setting

them on fire post murder. An FIR was, accordingly,

lodged at the Police Station on the 22nd September, 2007

in which he further stated that the appellant had

threatened a few days earlier that he would kill

everyone in his family.

3. The prosecution placed reliance on several

witnesses including PW-4 Hardev Singh to whom the

appellant had made an extra judicial confession, PW 5

Balbir Singh who had seen him coming out of the house

with a ghotna(pestle) and the evidence of Dr. Aman Sood

PW-9 who had carried the post mortem examinations on the

dead bodies and opined that the injuries on the head had

been caused by ghotna and that the bodies had been

burnt after death. Relying on these pieces of evidence

the trial court and the High Court convicted the

appellant and awarded him a death sentence.

4. When these matters came up for hearing on the 24th

July, 2009 notice had been issued confined to the

question of sentence only and we have heard Mr. Dushyant

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Parashar and Mr. Anil Grover, learned counsel for the

appellant and the learned Additional Advocate General

for the State of Punjab respectively on this question

today.

5. We find that the evidence against the appellant is

basically that of extra judicial confession and last

seen as supported by the medical evidence. We also see

that there is rule or law that a death sentence cannot

be awarded in a case based on circumstantial evidence,

but as a matter of prudence the courts are chary in

awarding a death sentence in such cases. We are,

therefore, of the opinion that the award of the death

sentence in the circumstances of the case was not

justified.

6. As the notice was a limited one we direct that the

sentence on the appellant be commuted from death to

life. With this modification in the sentence, the

appeals are dismissed.

..............................J [HARJIT SINGH BEDI]

..............................J [CHANDRAMAULI KR. PRASAD]

NEW DELHI

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APRIL 05, 2011.