17 March 2008 :

the Indian Supreme Court commuted Kulwinder Singh’s death sentence to life imprisonment. He was found guilty of murdering two women, in Basala, Punjab. Singh allegedly fatally hit Hardip Kaur while attempting to rape her, then killed another woman, Joginder Kaur, that he was trying to guard so that she didn’t talk. The first instance tribunal found that it was a case of the ‘rarest of the rare’ that justified the death penalty. However, the Supreme Court established that the crimes were committed out of passion and therefore weren’t in the ‘rarest of the rare’ category that requires capital punishment.