The Punjab and Haryana High Court has recently commuted the death penalty of a rape accused while awarding him a 30-year of jail term for the rape and murder of a minor girl. The incident took place in 2018. The High Court observed that family members, especially mothers, treat their sons as precious ones or ‘raja beta’ and try to defend them, no matter how ‘imperfect or villainous’ they might be.
According to the Indian Express report, delivering the verdict, Justices Anoop Chitkara and Sukhvinder Kaur said, “Unfortunately, in this part of India, family members, especially mothers, often have such blind love for their ‘precious’ sons that, no matter how imperfect or villainous they might be, they are still regarded as ‘Raja Betas’.”
Holding that the child’s killing occurred in a state of panic to eliminate evidence of sexual assault and was not a pre-planned crime, the court ruled that the convict did not deserve the death penalty. It observed that his life should not be extinguished through the judicial process and instead directed him to pay Rs 30 lakh as compensation to the victim’s family.
The case relates to an incident on May 31, 2018, when a minor girl was sexually assaulted and murdered by a man employed by her father. The victim’s father earned a living as a small tent installer, and the accused had been working with him for nearly five to six years.
The accused lured a minor to his residence, where he sexually assaulted and murdered her with a kitchen knife. To hide the evidence, he placed the victim’s body inside a large kitchen bin previously used by his mother for storage.
When the accused’s mother found out about the crime, she tried to shield her son.
In early 2020, a lower court found both individuals guilty. The son was handed a death sentence for the assault and murder, while his mother received a seven-year term of rigorous imprisonment for her role in shielding him from the law. Both parties subsequently appealed these verdicts to the High Court.
The appellate court took a unique sociological view of the mother’s actions. While the judges described her behavior as “appalling,” they noted that her instinct to protect her son was a byproduct of a “deeply embedded” patriarchal culture and “orthodox conditioning.”
The high court cleared the mother of all criminal charges, ruling that while her actions were morally reprehensible, her instinct to shield her son—referred to as her ‘Raja-beta’—did not constitute a punishable offense under the law.”
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