In a recent judgement (Judgement on Feb 23 - Baldev Singh and Ors. V. State of Punjab), the Supreme Court reduced the sentence of three persons convicted of rape from 10 years to 3 and a half years, and also asked the three convicts to pay a fine of Rs 50,000 each to the victim.   In reducing the sentence, the court drew from the provision in S. 376 (punishment for rape) of the Indian Penal Code which allows the court to reduce the sentence for "adequate and special reasons". There have been a number of past cases where the Supreme Court has reversed High Court decisions reducing sentences under this provision for not giving suitable reasons.  In 2007, the Supreme Court struck down a decision of the Karnataka High Court which had reduced the sentence of a convicted rapist to 3 and a half years.  The High Court had stated that the sentence should be reduced since the accused was "a young boy of 18 years belonging to Vaddara Community and Illiterate".  The Supreme Court stated that there is a legislative mandate to impose a sentence for not less than 10 years.  Only in exceptional cases, for "adequate and special reasons" can a sentence less than 10 years be imposed.  It overturned the Karnataka High Court decision saying that there was an "absence of any reason which could have been treated as "special and adequate reason"". In Baldev Singh's case, the Supreme Court said: 1.  The fact that the incident is an old one (the incident took place in 1997) is a circumstance which fits into "adequate and special reasons" for reducing a sentence. 2. The parties have entered into a compromise among themselves. The issue is whether this judgement has gone beyond the legislative mandate, and whether it has adhered to the principles laid down by earlier decisions of the Supreme Court.  In 2007, the Supreme Court itself stated that for a crime like rape, strong reasons have to be given to reduce the sentence envisaged by the legislature.  Moreover, the provision does not envisage the settlement of a crime by payment of compensation to the victim of a crime.  A criminal act is seen in law as a crime against the whole of society (which is why the state's prosecution agency, and not the victim, goes to court against alleged criminals).  Therefore, criminal actions such as rape (or murder, robbery, kidnapping etc.) cannot be "settled" by the payment of compensation under the Indian Penal Code.  In this light, it should be interesting to see whether the State files an appeal against this judgement.

The Seeds Bill was introduced in 2004, and is listed for discussion in Rajya Sabha this week. We had flagged some issues in our Legislative Brief. The Standing Committee had also made some recommendations (summary available here). These included the following: Farmers selling seeds had to meet the same quality requirements (on physical and genetic purity, minimum level of germination etc.) as seed companies. Second, seed inspectors had the power to enter and search without a warrant, unlike the requirements in the Criminal Procedure Code for the police. Third, the compensation mechanism for farmers was through consumer courts; some other Acts provide separate bodies to settle similar issues. The government has circulated a list of official amendments. These address most of the issues (tabulated here). One significant issue has not been addressed. The financial memorandum estimates that Rs 36 lakh would be required for the implementation of the Act during 2004-05 from the Consolidated Fund of India. The amount required by state governments to establish testing laboratories and appointing seed analysts and seed inspectors has not been estimated, which implies that the successful implementation of the bill will depend on adequate provision in state budgets.