17 May 2005 :
the Orissa High Court, India, commuted the death sentence awarded to Krushna Naik by a lower court, to life imprisonment.Delivering the judgement, a division bench comprising Justice P K Tripathy and Justice A K Samantaray said "we find that the death sentence is not proportionate and according to the provision in section 354 of CRPC for the offence under section 302 of IPC, imprisonment for life is the normal sentence." Naik had been sentenced to death by the Additional Sessions Court in Bhanjanagar for killing Chakradhar Mallick in October 2000.
Mallick and some of his associates had confronted Naik as the latter had raped a girl of their village. In a fit of rage, Naik hit Mallick on the head with a wooden stick killing him on the spot.
(Sources: India News, 04/01/2005)
