27 March 2004 :

The Madras High Court, India, commuted the death sentence of 32 year old Marimuthu into life imprisonment. Marimuthu of Thiruvannamalai village near Srivilliputtur had been sentenced to death by a trial court on February 6, 2004 for hacking to death his wife, Perumal Ammal, and her parents, Thangaia Pillai and Vellayammal, in May 1999. Marimuthu, who already had three wives, killed the three after they opposed his marriage proposal.
During the High court hearing, Marimuthu's counsel said the trial court had failed to take note that the accused had no motive to commit the offence and that there were material contradictions in the evidence of prosecution witnesses. "We are satisfied that there is no pre-plan to commit murder. There is no deep-seated personal rivalry and though he murdered three innocent people, it was not an organised crime calling for imposition of death sentence as deterrence," stated the bench comprising Justice P. Sathasivam and Justice S.R. Singharavelu.
"It is settled law that unless the nature of the crime and the circumstances of the offender reveal that the criminal is a menace to society and the sentence of life imprisonment would be altogether inadequate, the court should ordinarily impose lesser punishment," the judges observed. "The mere fact that his wife and his parents-in-law were killed is not sufficient to bring the case within the category of the rarest of rare cases," they said.