Supreme Court commutes death sentence of Karnataka man who killed his children in 2010

“We direct that the hangman’s noose be taken off the appellant-convict’s neck, and instead that he remains in prison till the end of his days given by God Almighty,” the bench said in its February 13 order.

Commuting the death sentence, the court said, “We should not even for a moment be taken to understand that the barbarity of the crime, the helplessness of the two children who met the most unfortunate of ends, and that too at the hands of the very person who bore half the responsibility of bringing them into the world, has escaped us, or we, in any way have condoned such a hideous act, done by the appellant-convict.”

The bench said the convict should have followed the “live and let live” policy which would mean “people should accept the way other people live and behave, particularly, if their way of doing things is different than one’s own.”

Besides his two children, Naika also allegedly murdered his sister-in-law and mother-in-law, a trial for which is being held separately. Naika, a manager with Punjab National Bank, was upset with his sister-in-law for pursuing a relationship with her co-worker, whom she intended to marry. He asked his wife to dissuade her sister from the relationship, but it did not work. He then allegedly planned to kill his sister-in-law, mother-in-law, and children and to get his wife to die by suicide.

Naika allegedly killed the sister-in-law and mother-in-law in Tumkur village on June 16, 2010. The next day, he came to Mangalore, where his family lived, took the children out on the pretext of showing them around, and drowned them in a tank in a garden. He then sent a message to his wife informing her about the children’s deaths and asking her to end her life. She informed her relatives, who advised her to approach authorities.

While a trial court convicted him in December 2013 and sentenced him to death, the Karnataka High Court confirmed the death sentence in September 2017.

The Supreme Court did not find any error in the findings by the trial court and High Court about his guilt. Discussing the mitigating circumstances, the bench pointed out that Naika got his sister-in-law her job.