Courts must avoid undue leniency in awarding sentence: SC

Undue leniency in awarding sentence must be avoided by courts as it neither deters an accused nor does it reassure the society that offender has been properly dealt with, the Supreme Court has observed while sending three persons to three years in jail for grievously injuring a man.
A bench of justices Dipak Misra and Shiva Kirti Singh, which set aside a Madhya Pradesh High Court order that had sentenced the trio to a period already undergone by them in jail during trial, also said the high court was "over-lenient" in its order.
"It is the duty of the court awarding sentence to ensure justice to both the parties and therefore undue leniency in awarding sentence needs to be avoided because it does not have the necessary effect of being a deterrent for the accused and does not reassure the society that the offender has been properly dealt with.

"In the present case the order of punishment imposed by the high court suffers from the vice of being over-lenient even in absence of any mitigating circumstance," the bench said while deciding the appeal filed by Madhya Pradesh government challenging the high court verdict.
The high court had partly allowed criminal appeals preferred by the three convicts to convert their conviction under section 307(attempt to murder) to 326 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons) of IPC and had reduced the sentence of 10 years rigorous imprisonment to a period already undergone which was of one year and nine months. It had however maintained their conviction.

The apex court also said, "There was hardly any mitigating circumstance to take such a lenient view as has been done by the high court. The law on the principles governing proper sentencing has been elaborated by this court in large number of cases.