The Supreme Court (SC) has supported amendment in criminal law allowing the extreme penalty of death to persons who mastermind and execute kidnapping for ransom.
It has underlined the statistics showing kidnapping for ransom as a lucrative and thriving industry, saying it must be dealt with in the “harshest manner possible”.
A bench of justices HS Bedi and JM Panchal said this while upholding death to two persons and reducing their woman accomplice's term from the extreme sentence to a sentence.
The convicts, Vikram Singh, Jasvir Singh and his wife Sonia, had contested the sentence given to them by Punjab and Haryana high court for kidnapping a 16-year-old boy Abhi Verma in Punjab five years ago and killing him after they didn't get the ransom money.
Referring to the frequent debate on efficacy of the capital punishment, the apex court said as long as the penalty exists in statute, courts are justified in ordering termination of life of persons who indulged in heinous and the rarest of rare offence.
Referring to the amendment in IPC, it said a plain reading of the objects and reasons of the amended law shows parliament’s concern in dealing with kidnapping for ransom a crime which called for a deterrent punishment even in a case, where the kidnapping had not resulted in the death of the victim.
