01 September 1999 :

In September, the Supreme Court refused to commute the death sentence to a life term for Dharmendra and Narendra, who brutally murdered 5 members of a family, including 3 children on the night between May 26-27, 1994. A Bench comprising Justice S. S. M. Quadri and Justice Santosh N. Hegde said it was a rarest of rare case where the extreme penalty would serve the ends of justice. The Allahabad High Court, though confirming the conviction of the accused persons, had commuted the death sentence awarded to the two men into life imprisonment, on the grounds that they were languishing in a death cell for three years. The Apex Court said the High Court had erred in coming to the conclusion, both factually and inferentially: the accused were not in a death cell for 3 years nor was there a law which provided that a person in a death cell for 3 years would ipso facto be entitled to commutation of death sentence.