Condemning the sacrifice of a nine-year-old child to appease a deity in Jharkhand by a tribal, the Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty awarded to him and said that in such cases extreme punishment ‘‘should be the rule’’.A two-judge bench, upholding the death sentence to Sushil Murmu, said ‘‘this is an illustrative and most exemplary case to be treated as the ‘rarest of rare cases’ in which death sentence is and should be the rule with no exception whatsoever.’’ Murmu had allegedly sacrificed nine-year-old Chirku Besra before Goddess Kali on December 11, 1996 and dumped the head in a pond.Advocate Anil Kumar Mittal, counsel for Murmu, had said though superstition was not encouraged in a modern society, an illiterate tribal brought up in an atmosphere surcharged with superstition should not be awarded death penalty. Rejecting the plea, the Court said, ‘‘superstition cannot and does not provide justification for any killing.‘‘No amount of superstitious colour can wash away the sin and offence of an unprovoked killing, more so in the case of an innocent and defenceless child.’’ The Court said even if the helpless face and voice of the innocent child didn’t arouse ‘‘kindness in the heart of the accused, the nonchalant way in which he carried the severed head in a gunny bag and threw it in the pond shows the act was diabolic of a most superlative degree in conception and cruel in execution.’’
