Byluru Thippaiah @ Byaluru Thippaiah @ Nayakara Thippaiah vs State of Karnataka

Court

Supreme Court of India

Date

16 July 2025

Case No.

Criminal Appeal No(s). 2490-2491 of 2023

Result

Partly allowed

Bench

Vikram Nath, Sanjay Karol, Sandeep Mehta

Citation

[2025] 7 S.C.R. 550 : 2025 INSC 862

Acts & Sections

IPC CrPC

Issue for consideration

Issue arose as regards commutation of the death sentence awarded

to the appellant for committing brutal murder of his wife, sister-inlaw and his three children.

Headnote

Sentence/Sentencing – Death sentence – Commutation of – Brutal murder by the appellant of his wife, sister-inlaw and his three children – Motive was that the appellant accused his wife and sister-in-law of being promiscuous and that he had not fathered the three children – Trial court convicted the appellant for the offence punishable u/s.302 and awarded death sentence – Upheld by the High Court – Correctness:

Held: Findings of the courts below regarding the appellant’s conviction for the barbaric and ruthless murders of his family members, affirmed – Nothing on record to discredit the prosecution case or expose any gaps, errors, conjectures or surmises in the chain of circumstantial evidence established by the prosecution, beyond reasonable doubt – Act of the appellant came from a place of grave hatred for the deceased persons, however there was no sudden provocation which led to him having taken such a drastic step – His planning and forethought is sufficiently exhibited – Not a shred of evidence either oral or documentary produced to posit appellant’s innocence and bringing the possibility of involvement of third party – No reason to take a different view on the appellant’s guilt, than the one that has been taken by the courts below, keeping with the principle of adopting a cautionary approach in interfering with concurrent findings of guilt – However, as regards sentencing, despite having considerable information before it, the High Court did not consider it appropriately and sufficiently, in view of the findings recorded in the said reports – Probation Report reveals that the appellant has no antecedents, there is mixed opinion on whether he is suitable for reformation or not – Mitigation report reveals difficulties throughout – Considering the sum total of circumstances that drove the appellant to point of committing this crime of a most reprehensible nature, the death penalty not appropriate – He should spend his days in jail attempting to repent for the crimes committed by him – He is released from death row, instead, to await his last breath in prison, without remission – Penal Code, 1860. [Paras 9-17]

Judgment Sanjay Karol, J. 1. This is the third in an unfortunate line of cases that have travelled up to this Court in a recent past and have become ripe for adjudication where we find all sense of responsibility and propriety to have been given a go by, by the Appellant-convict. In this case, the seed of violence was the suspected infidelity of his wife Pakkeeramma1. He suspected that his three-children namely Pavithra2, Nagraj @Rajappa3 and Basamma4 born to D-1 were perhaps not his own. 2. Concurrently, the Appellant-convict has been held guilty of charges framed against him in FIR Cr. No

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