RAGHUBIR SINGH versus STATE OF HARYANA

Citation: [1974] 3 S.C.R. 356 · Decided: 12-02-1974 · Supreme Court of India · Bench: V.R. KRISHNA IYER · Disposal: Case Partly allowed

Cited by 1 judgment(s) · see the full citation network in Lexace

Judgment (excerpt)

356 
RAGHUBIR SINGH 
v. 
STATE OF HARYANA 
February 12, 197 4. 
[V. R. KRISHNA IYER AND R. S. SARKARIA, JJ.) 
Murder-Death penalty when ca11 be reduced to life in1prisonn1ent. 
The appellant developed illicit intimacy with 
the 
deceased. 
When the 
A 
B 
deceased feigned pregnancy and pressed him to marry her, he gave ~er a deadly 
poison mixed in milk. On the dea:th of the deceased he wrappecJ the d-.!ad body 
in a-blanket.and Left it in a railway compartment. He was 
cOD\'icted 
and 
senteDced to death. 
C 
On appeal to this Court on the question of sentence : 
HELD : While murder in its aggravated form and in the abs~nce of extenuat· 
ing factors connected with crime, criminal or legal process, still is condignly 
visited with death penalty, a compassionate alternative of life im,P.risonment in 
all other circumstances is gaining judicial ground. [357 G-H] 
Iri the instant case a few ameliorative features fall to 
be 
noticed since 
judicial temper has more components than indignation against murder. 
The 
D 
appellant is in his twenties, not irrelevant in considering death sentence. 
He 
was a married man. 
He was promiscuous with women, a salacious sin for 
which the deceased was a contributory. Tue latter's pressure to get him to 
marry her must have planted the seed of murderous 
thought in him. 
He 
bargained for romance, encouraged by the victim but her pretended pregnancy 
upset. the appellant. 
Some planning and treachery have aggravated the crime. 
Yet another circumstance is that the man was sentenced to death nearly two 
years ago and the_ spectre of death penalty must have tormented his ~ouL Taken 
E 
separately, none of these matters may suffice to commute but the conspectus of 
factors, personal ·and social, tilt th_e scales in favour -Of life term. [357 El 
CIUMINA!. APPELLATE JURISDICTION ;. Criminal Appeal No. 124 
of 1973. 
· 
Appeal by special leave from the judgment and order dated the 30th 
November, 1972· of the Punjab and Haryana High Court in Criminal 
F 
Appeal No. 632 of 1972 and Murder Ref. No. 27 of 1972. 
Nuruddin Ahmed and S. K. Mehta, for the appellant. 
Gautam Goswami and R. N. Sachthey, for the respondent. 
The Judgment of the Court was delivered by 
KRISHNA IYER, J. A young woman was vomitted into death by a 
young man by giving her a cup of milk mixed with a lethal dose of 
stricnine. He, along with two others, bundled the cadaver into a Delhi-
bound train but the coach cleaner discovered it, the police unearthed 
the crime, the court convicted the culprits awarding capital sentence 
to the killer and lighter punishments to the two accessories after the 
fact, under s. 201, I.P.C. Special leave has been granted to the only 
appellant on the sole ground of sentence and so our scrutiny is con-
fined to the circumstances of the crime and criminal and the penolo-
gical propriety of inflicting the higher or lesser punishment. 
G 
H 
' ' 
A 
B 
c 
D 
E 
F 
G 
H 
RAGHUBIR SINGH v. HARYANA (Krishna Iyer, I.) 
357 
Twenty six-years-old Raghubir Singh-the appellant-was a les-
ser official in the Malaria Eradication Department in Gorior, a village 
in Rajasthan. He became friends 
with a veterinary official, 
Sri 
Sharma, P.W. 13, and by a concatenation of innocent circumstances 
the appellant came into carnal comity with Kailashw'ati, the 2nd ac-
cused, a midwife in a local hospital. Later, the appellant was trans-
ferred to a viUage Mandhapia in the Family Planning Department 
where he came across Sushma Thomas, a nurse in the same depart-
ment. Prurient Raghubir picked up a liaison with this malayalee 
belle older to him by five years and-going by the medical evidence, 
not a virgin. She seems to have feigned pregnancy probably to force 
a matrimony for which Raghubir was reluctant. 
After many twists 
and turns of events, on June 6, 1971, the appellant secured half a grain 
of stricnine hydrochloride from Sharma, the friend, on the pretext that 
it was needed for killing stray dogs. This Sharma's naivete in supply-
ing poison looks suspicious and it is for Government to look into, re-
membering that he was more than a dispensing cheiuist in this case. 
Anyway, the amorou.s pair spent the night of the 10th June at the 
quarters of the 2nd accused, and the appellant brought milk for the 
deceased who consumed the cup of death. After agonising hours of 
vomitting struggle, she breathed her last, was wrapped in a blanket 
and given a railway burial. 
The criminal act was treacherous murder

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