Kerala rapist escapes death sentence after legal ‘bungle’

The Supreme Court yesterday revoked the capital punishment awarded to a convict for the rape and murder of a woman on train five years ago.The court cleared Govindachami of murder charges on the benefit of the doubt while upholding the seven years of hard labour the trial court awarded him for raping 23-year-old Soumya.The purse-snatcher is likely to walk free in about 16 months as he has already spent most of the term behind bars. He faces sentencing in a few minor cases of theft.A bench of justice Ranjan Gogoi, justice P C Pant and justice U U Lalit upheld charges under Section 376 (punishment for rape), 394 (voluntarily causing hurt in committing robbery) and 325 (punishment for voluntarily causing grievous hurt) of the Indian Penal Code.The government of Kerala, the home state of the victim, said it would file a review petition in the court, admissibility of which, legal circles feel, is doubtful. Govindachami’s petition had been pending before the apex court for the past two years.“We suspect the court had not looked into the pieces of evidence, especially the autopsy report, in detail. We will appeal,” insisted A K Balan, the southern state’s law minister.The victim – who had been employed in a textile shop in the port city of Kochi – was travelling to her hometown of Palakkad, some 130km away on February 1, 2011, when she was attacked in a coach on the Ernakulam-Thrissur passenger train.A police investigation found that Govindachami first tried to snatch away her bag, hit her head on the doors several times, pushed her off the moving train, carried the unconscious woman to a nearby place and raped.The autopsy had found traces of Govindachami’s DNA on her body. The medical examination also found bruises on Govindachami’s body which were inflicted by the victim while resisting the rape attempt.However, the apex court was not convinced of the argument in the absence of “evidence” to prove the murder charges.Soumya was found unconscious near the railway tracks and died in hospital five days later.A fast track court in Thrissur in 2012 awarded the man from Virudhunagar in the neighbouring Tamil Nadu state seven years in jail as well as the death sentence.The Kerala High Court had upheld the death sentence in December 2013, and the convict had challenged it in the Supreme Court and got a stay of execution, in July 2014. The court also called for all the records from the lower courts for a review.Govindachami was a convict in eight other cases of robbery, attempted rape and causing injury while robbery and he will have to undergo imprisonment varying from 45 days to eight months or a total of 33 months and 15 days in these cases, which could further delay his release.On hearing the verdict, Soumya’s mother Sumathi broke down, saying “The Supreme Court’s verdict breaks my heart. I have always been hoping that my daughter would get justice.”Counsel A Sureshan, who had appeared in the trial court and ensured the suspect got the death penalty, blamed the prosecution for the case failure. He claimed the new counsels failed to consult him while conducting the case in the high court. This was not the case when the convict’s review petition came up before the high court, he said.