A man led a nine-year-old girl to a hill where he raped, strangled and murdered her. The girl’s sister testified that she saw her sister leave with the man and the mother later recovered the girl’s body from the hill and filed the police report against the accused. He was convicted and sentenced to death under Sections 376 and 302 of the Indian Penal Code. The man appealed, claiming that he should not be sentenced to death on circumstantial evidence alone. The High Court dismissed the appeal. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that circumstantial evidence establishes the guilt of the accused, forming the conviction, but does not bear any relation to the sentencing. The Supreme Court defers discretion to trial judges in arriving at a proper sentence dealing with the subtleties of each case.
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