Allahabad High Court Reduces Father and Son’s Death Sentence in 19-Year-Old Murder Case

The Allahabad High Court recently commuted the death sentence of a father-son duo, Vijay and Dheeraj Sharma, convicted in a 2005 double murder case, to life imprisonment. The court upheld their conviction for murder but ruled that the case did not qualify as a ‘rarest of rare’ instance warranting capital punishment. The bench, comprising Justice Attau Rahman Masoodi and Justice Ajai Kumar Srivastava-I, highlighted two significant factors in reducing the sentence: the circumstantial nature of the evidence and the absence of any prior criminal record for the accused. The incident involved a dispute over a construction project between the deceased, Krishna Kumar Gupta, a builder, and Vijay Sharma, a security agency owner. The argument escalated when Gupta resisted Sharma’s demand for three shops, prompting Sharma’s son to retrieve a gun, leading to Gupta and his son Kapil’s fatal shooting. Although key witnesses turned hostile, the court deemed the police testimonies reliable and concluded that circumstantial evidence firmly implicated the accused. However, noting the lack of direct evidence and criminal history, the court reduced their punishment to life imprisonment.