A three Judge Bench of the Supreme Court dismissed a review petition of a death penalty convict and reaffirmed their previous judgement on Thursday.
The convict, Manoharan, had filed a review petition for the death penalty awarded to him. He committed the heinous crime in 2010. The convict had kidnapped a 10-year-old girl and her 7-year-old sibling who were on their way to school in Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu. He then brutally sexually assaulted the minor girl before killing both of them, by poisoning the milk that they drank. Later, he dumped their bodies in a canal.
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In a 2-1 judgement that dismissed the review petition, a bench headed by Justice RF Nariman, who wrote the judgement for himself and Justice Suryakant, said that the crime that the accused has been convicted for, has shaken the conscience of the society and doesn’t deserve any mercy. They reaffirmed the verdict of the Supreme Court that upheld the death penalty in August this year against Manoharan.
Justice Sanjiv Khanna was the dissenting judge who was of the opinion that commutation to life imprisonment was sufficient in this case.
The final options before the convict is to file a curative petition in the Supreme court and then seek a Presidential pardon.