INDIA: HC COMMUTES TO LIFE CHILD KILLER'S DEATH SENTENCE

a man sentenced to death for murdering a child had his death sentenced commuted to life imprisonment by the Madras high court in India. Venkatesan, 26, was sentenced for the murder of nine-year-old Rebecca in March 2006, due to personal enmity with the child's social worker-mother in Tiruvallur district. Venkatesan was working as a van driver in the orphanage run by Sheeba Elizabeth. He was dismissed over a relationship with a fellow employee, and returned to the orphanage and set his employer’s daughter alight with a candle and petrol. A division bench comprising justice M Chockalingam and justice S Rajeswaran declined to consider it as a rarest of rare cases, the bench said the accused was aged only 26, and that he was not involved in any other criminal case to be considered a menace to the society in the future. The bench modified the sentence into life imprisonment, after stating that the murder of an innocent child was "heinous and gruesome."