The Calcutta High Court has said that a judge should not adopt a “bloodthirsty” approach. The remark came in the case of Aftab Alam, who had murdered his uncle.
According to media reports, Aftab Alam, convicted of murder, had initially been sentenced to death. However, a bench of Justice Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya and Justice Uday Kumar commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, observing that judges should not deliver judgments driven by a thirst for blood. The court made this statement while citing several Supreme Court rulings.
The bench noted, “Hanging murderers has never really benefited them… In recent times, prisons have been renamed from ‘jail’ to ‘correctional homes’, reflecting the effort to reform convicts. The principle is that one must hate the crime, not the criminal.”
