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13. There is every probability that the appellants can be reformed and rehabilitated,

14. All the four main objectives which state intends to achieve namely deterrence, prevention, retribution and reformation can be achieved by keeping the appellants alive.

Aggravating Circumstances:

1. It was a planned, cold-blooded brutal murder,

2. Entire family was wiped out.…”

12. A contrario Shri Rai would support the judgment and order passed by the Courts below convicting the appellants of the aforesaid offence and sentencing them to death. He would submit that the reasons recorded by the Courts below fall within the statutory requirements under Section 354(3) of the Code as well as the parameters laid down by this Court for recording “special reasons” while sentencing a convict to death. He would distinguish the cases cited by Shri Bharadwaj as cases wherein the sentence of the accused persons was commuted due to reasons besides absence of “special reasons” for sentencing the accused therein in the judgments and orders of the Courts below and further place reliance upon the decision of this Court in Gurdev Singh v. State of Punjab, (2003) 7 SCC 258 amongst others, wherein this Court has sentenced the accused persons therein who were responsible for causing the death of fifteen persons, besides causing grievous injuries to eight others to death after balancing the aggravating and mitigating circumstances.

33. In Allauddin Mian v. State of Bihar, (1989) 3 SCC 5 this Court has examined the purpose of inclusion of “special reasons” clause as follows:

“9. … When the law casts a duty on the judge to state reasons it follows that he is under a legal obligation to explain his choice of the sentence. It may seem trite to say so, but the existence of the “special reasons clause” in the above provision implies that the court can in fit cases impose the extreme penalty of death which negatives the contention that there never can be a valid reason to visit an offender with the death penalty, no matter how cruel, gruesome or shocking the crime may be… While rejecting the demand of the protagonist of the reformatory theory for the abolition of the death penalty the legislature in its wisdom thought that the “special reasons clause” should be a sufficient safeguard against arbitrary imposition of the extreme penalty. Where a sentence of severity is imposed, it is imperative that the judge should indicate the basis upon which he considers a sentence of that magnitude justified. Unless there are special reasons, special to the facts of the particular case, which can be catalogued as justifying a severe punishment the judge would not award the death sentence. It may be stated that if a judge finds that he is unable to explain with reasonable accuracy the basis for selecting the higher of the two sentences his choice should fall on the lower sentence. In all such cases the law casts an obligation on the judge to make his choice after carefully examining the pros and cons of each case. It must at once be conceded that offenders of some particularly grossly brutal crimes which send tremors in the community have to be firmly dealt with to protect the community from the perpetrators of such crimes. Where the incidence of a certain crime is rapidly growing and is assuming menacing proportions, for example, acid pouring or bride burning, it may be necessary for the courts to award exemplary punishments to protect the community and to deter others from committing such crimes. Since the legislature in its wisdom thought that in some rare cases it may still be necessary to impose the extreme punishment of death to deter others and to protect the society and in a given case the country, it left the choice of sentence to the judiciary with the rider that the judge may visit the convict with the extreme punishment provided there exist special reasons for so doing. …”

57. In Prajeet Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar, (2008) 4 SCC 434 the accused was a paying guest for a continuous period of four years in lieu of a sum of Rs.500 for food and meals. He brutally executed three innocent defenceless children aged 8, 15 and 16, attempted to murder the father (informant) and mother who survived the attack with multiple injuries. There was no provocation or reason for committing this ghastly act at a time when the children were sleeping. There were several incised wounds (muscle- deep or bone-deep) caused to the deceased. Considering the brutality, diabolic, inhuman nature and enormity of the crime (multiple murders and attacks), this Court held that the mindset of the accused could not be said to be amenable to any reformation. Therefore, it came under the rarest of the rare category where not awarding a death sentence would have resulted in failure of justice.

26. Taking into consideration the brutality of the attack, the number of persons murdered, the age and infirmity of the victims, their vulnerability and the diabolic motive, acts of perversion on the person of Reeta, cumulatively we find the sentence awarded by the trial court was just and proper. “ Mitigating and Aggravating Circumstances in the present case:

82. Having noticed the decisions of this Court on the said aspect, we would revert to the factual position in this case. Herein, the time, place, manner of and the motive behind commission of the crime speak volumes of the pre- mediated and callous nature of the offence. The ruthlessness of the appellants is reflected through brutal murders of the young, innocent children and wife of the informant by burning them alive to avenge their cause in the dark of the night; the cause being non-withdrawal of an FIR filed by the informant for theft of his buffalo against the appellant-A1. Further, from the record we gather that only family members of the informant have come forward to depose as the entire village must have been shocked with the ghastly murders of the deceased persons and in such circumstances would not have come forward to testify against the appellants who already had translated the threats given to the informant in village panchayat into a shocking reality. While our experience reminds us that civilized people generally unsuccinctly when the crime is committed infact in their presence, withdraw themselves both from the victim and the vigilante unless inevitable and consider that crime like civil disputes must restrict itself to the two parties, it also evidences for the threat the incident had instilled amongst the villagers that none in such close knit unit besides the sanguine relatives had come forth to testify against the accused.