Supreme Court commutes death penalty to Borkar

Borkar convicted of killing a child for ransom the SUPREME Court has commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment, relying among others on poems that he wrote in jail to conclude that he “would not be a continuing threat to society”. The court said that “from the poems, written by him in the jail, it appears that he has realised his mistake which was committed by him at the time when he was of young age and that he is reformative” and added that “therefore the appellant can be reformed and rehabilitated”. It concluded that although the offence was “undoubtedly… brutal”, it “does not warrant death sentence”. “It is required to be noted that the accused was not a previous convict or a professional killer,” the judgment said. The Bombay High Court had confirmed the death sentence in June 2006 against which Borkar approached the Supreme Court.