Certo Is this judgment real?
Beta, Supreme Court only. We check Supreme Court of India judgments only for now: a High Court citation reads "Not in our corpus", which never means it does not exist.

Supreme Court of India

SRIRANGAN versus STATE OF TAMIL NADU

Decided
30 November 1977
Judges listed
V.R. KRISHNA IYER (as the open data lists them; this may not name the whole bench)
Disposal
Disposed off

Citations

Official
[1978] 2 S.C.R. 270 · 1977 INSC 225

Cited by

Cited in 1 other Supreme Court judgment we hold.

Counted only in the Supreme Court judgments we hold whose text we could read, not in High Court judgments. We match each citation to a judgment automatically, so a citation we cannot match is not counted. "Cited" says only that a judgment refers to this one, not whether it followed, distinguished or overruled it.

The Court's text

Paragraphs from our copy of the Supreme Court Reports print, with the Court's own paragraph numbers, the printed page and, where printed, the margin letter. The Court did not number this judgment's paragraphs, so they are listed by page. Link to paragraph N with #para-N.

KRISHNA IYER, J.-A toddy tapper, young in age and a mental case, returning after a day-long toil with his tool, the sickle, and tense in state, was provoked by some trivias and went into tantrums and inflicted triple killings, all in one sombre sunset. Th;s bleeding tragedy Jed to prosecution and conviction, appeal and contlnnation, the unimpeachable offence being murder. The defence of insanity tested by the hoary rule in McNaghten's case,. codified in the Indian Penal Code over hundred years ago, was rightly dismissed, the testimony of dementia falling far short of the prescription in section 84 I.P.C. We have discovered no error in the factual finding and must therefore confirm the conviction. Indeed, leave itself was granted confined to the question of sentence.

p. 270, margin F

The trial Judge, whose horror at the multiple homicide unsheathed the terror of death penalty, decreed capital sentence on the culprit, and the High Court, deeply disturbed by "the brutal triple murder", set its seal of approval on guilt and punishment.

p. 271, margin A

In the agonisingly sensitive area of sentencing, especially in the -choice between life term and death penalty, a wide spectrum of circumstances attracts judicial attention, since they are all inarticulately implied in the penological part of s. 302 1.P.C. read with s. 354(3) 'Cr. P.C. The plurality of factors bearing on the crime and the doer of the crime must carefully enter the judicial verdict. The winds of penological reform notwithstanding, the prescription in s. 302 binds and death penalty is still permissible in the punitive pharmacopoeia of India. Even so, the current of precedents and the relevant catena of clement facts, personal, social and other, persuade us to hold that, even as in Nanu Ram v. State of Assam (A.LR. 1975 S.C. 762), the lesser penalty of life imprisonment will be a more appropriate punishment here.

p. 271, margin A

We set aside the death sentence and award imprisonment for life io the appellant under s. 302 l.P.C. The appeal is disposed of .accordingly.

p. 271, margin C

Sentence reduced.

p. 271, margin D