Supreme Court: In the case where the refusal to marriage proposal by a girl resulted into a house trespass by the accused carrying an acid bottle and pouring it over the head of the girl and the Hyderabad High Court had reduced the sentence of one year imposed by the Trail Court to the imprisonment already undergone by the accused i.e. 1 month, the Court said that when a substantive sentence of thirty days is imposed, in the crime of present nature, that is, acid attack on a young girl, the sense of justice is not only ostracized, but also is unceremoniously sent to “Vanaprastha”.
The Court said that the case at hand is an example of uncivilized and heartless crime committed by the accused. It is completely unacceptable that concept of leniency can be conceived of in such a crime. A crime of this nature does not deserve any kind of clemency as it is individually as well as collectively intolerable. When there is medical evidence that there was an acid attack on the young girl and the circumstances having brought home by cogent evidence and the conviction is given the stamp of approval, there was no justification to reduce the sentence to the period already undergone. The bench said that it unfathomable whether the High Court has been guided by some unknown notion of mercy absolutely ignoring the plight and the pain of the victim; a young girl who had sustained an acid attack, a horrendous assault on the physical autonomy of an individual that gets more accentuated when the victim is a young woman or remaining oblivious of the precedents relating to sentence or for that matter, not careful about the expectation of the collective from the court, for the society at large eagerly waits for justice to be done in accordance with law.
Apart from setting aside the order of the High Court and restoring the sentence imposed by the Trial Court, the Court directed the accused to pay a compensation of Rs.50,000/- and the State to pay a compensation of Rs. 3 lakhs. It was further directed that if the accused fails to pay the compensation amount within six months, he shall suffer further rigorous imprisonment of six months, in addition to what has been imposed by the trial court. [Ravad Sasikala v. State of Andhra Pradesh, 2017 SCC OnLine SC 175, decided on 27.02.2017]
