Three years after Bachan Singh restricted the death penalty to the 'rarest of rare' cases, a three-judge Bench in Machhi Singh gave that open-textured standard a working structure — five categories of circumstance and a 'balance sheet' method for weighing aggravating against mitigating factors. A digest of the facts, the framework, and the doctrine's contested later trajectory.
In 1983 a five-judge Constitution Bench struck down Section 303 of the Indian Penal Code, which had made death the only punishment for a life-convict who committed murder. A digest of the facts, the holding that a mandatory, discretion-free death sentence violates Articles 14 and 21, and the judgment's place in India's death-penalty jurisprudence.
On 19 May 2026, a two-judge bench held that a directed crime-scene re-enactment limited to physical movements does not per se amount to testimonial compulsion under Article 20(3); such material is admissible as corroborative — not substantive — evidence. Conviction restored on circumstantial proof; death sentence commuted to life.
On 5 May 2017, a three-judge bench of Justices Dipak Misra, R. Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan dismissed the appeals filed by the four adult convicts in the December 2012 Delhi gang-rape and murder — known to public memory as the Nirbhaya case — and affirmed the death sentence imposed by the Trial Court and confirmed by the Delhi High Court. The judgment applied the rarest-of-rare doctrine articulated in Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab (1980) and held that the offence fell within its scope. A digest of the holding, the doctrinal application, and the architecture of capital sentencing it confirms.
A five-judge Constitution Bench in 1980 upheld the constitutional validity of the death penalty by a 4:1 majority, with Bhagwati J. delivering a powerful dissent two years later. The Sarkaria J. majority opinion gave the bar the 'rarest of rare' doctrine, the special-reasons requirement under Section 354(3) CrPC, and the doctrinal architecture of the pre-sentence hearing under Section 235(2) — the framework that anchors every contemporary sentencing appeal.