Rarest Of Rare Doctrine In Rape Cases: Judicial Interpretation In India
- IJLLR Journal
- 14 minutes ago
- 1 min read
Saanvi S, School of Law, Christ Deemed to be University
ABSTRACT
This paper analyses how India's doctrine of 'rarest of rare' circumscribes capital punishment in the context of rape and rape-murder trials by using Supreme Court judgments with limited references to High Court and trial- court judgments in so far as they provide sentencing and confirmation patterns. It also demonstrates, through close reading and a coded case matrix, how courts actually balance aggravating and mitigating factors, measure chances of reformation and appeal to "collective conscience." The dataset reports widely acknowledged aggravators and habitual mitigators and looks at bench/forum influences on different levels. Analysing both confirmations of death as well as cases where the doctrine was not used, with severe non- death consequences such as life sentences or long minimums or consecutive sentences, the paper identifies their predictable commutation thresholds and warns of a drift towards offence-centred reasoning in high-salience cases. It suggests minimalistic mitigation restrictions at sentencing (the required mitigation dossier), a forced-reasoning short form checklist and a presumption against death in circumstantial and split-verdict cases, and model non-death term orders. All these tools are intended to translate doctrine into actionable decision points and maintain outcomes as narrow, uniform, and true to constitutional guarantees of equality, dignity, and due process.
Keywords: rarest of rare, capital punishment, aggravating and mitigating factors, reformation, collective conscience.
