Law: Pakistan Penal Code, 1860

Section: 302

Penal Code (XLV of 1860), S. 302-Sentence-Old man of 60 or being a man with family-Whether grounds for awarding lesser penalty-Duty of Sessions Court. The mere fact that a man who has taken part in a pre­meditated murder is an old man of 60 is no ground for taking a lenient view in the matter of sentence. Where, the murder is premeditated and was committed with the intention to kill, all acting with that intention must be sentenc­ed to death unless there be some other extenuating circumstances. Similarly, where a death sentences is otherwise deserved, declining to award the extreme penalty of law on the ground that the accused is a man with a family amounts to taking the humaneness with which law views an accused person to a ridiculous extent and the doctrine of the humanity of criminal law very much beyond its proper limits. On conviction an accused person has to be treated as a criminal and though even then mercy may season justice and punishment must not be determined by any vindictive consideration, leniency in the matter of sentence where it. is not deserved is a serious derelic­tion of duty on the part of the judge to whom the State has entrusted the duty of doing justice between man and man, and a judge who is mentally incapable of awarding capital punish­ment where law and facts demand it is a complete misfit in judicial machinery. Being placed in that system he has no right to play the part of a conscientious objector. Though the law prescribes an, alternative sentence on con­viction of murder, judges have been consistently emphasising the position that the normal sentence in such cases is death unless there be any extenuating circumstances. A. I. R. 1948 Lah. 58 ref. JUDGMENT MUHAMMAD MUNIR, C. J.-This is an appeal from a life sentence. The four appellants, Khairdi Khan, Dilawar Khan, Jahandad and Sher Muhammad have been convicted and' sentenced for the murders of Sher Bahadur and Khan Bahadur. The case was at first tried by Khan Inayat Ullah Khan, Sessions Judge, Attock, who by his order dated 18th day 1949, acquitted the appellants. On revision, the acquittal was set aside by a learned judge of this Court by his order dated 2nd February 1950 and a…

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