An Indian Reserve Battalion (IRB) Constable who had shot dead five of his colleagues for trying to sodomise him while guarding a bank in the Capital has been given a reduced sentence by the Delhi High Court, from life term to 10 years in jail, saying the offence took place on a “sudden provocation”.

A Bench of Justice Sunil Gaur and Justice A. K. Chawla noted: “The circumstances leading to the incident have to be considered in a broad perspective and the right of self-defence is not required to be weighed in golden scales”.

The sensational incident had rocked the city when the Delhi Police found five bodies of IRB guards in the Dena Bank branch, Daryaganj, on the morning of March 11, 2007. The five constables and the convict, all on deputation from Sikkim, were on night duty at the bank.

The police had found the convict injured at the bank. He initially tried to frame another IRB guard, who was not present at the time of the murders.

In August 2015, a trial court convicted him for the crime and sent him to life imprisonment.

He availed the services of Delhi High Court Legal Services Committee to challenge the trial court verdict. Advocate Ajay Verma was assigned the case to argue on his behalf before the High Court.

In its verdict, the HC too discarded his initial version that he was being framed in the case saying the prosecution had “unerringly” proved that no other person except he had committed the offence.

However, the HC went on to explore the nature of the crime and under what circumstances it was committed.

“Instant case is a typical one, where in a fit of anger, appellant had exceeded his right of self-defence,” the Bench said, holding that the offence committed by him was not “culpable homicide amounting to murder” but “culpable homicide not amounting to murder”.

“In the instant case, appellant had reacted violently and it appears that when attempt was made by the deceased persons to sodomise the appellant, he had lost his balance of mind and in a fit of anger, had indiscriminately fired at his five colleagues, who unfortunately died in the incident,” the HC observed.

The Bench noted that since the incident took place on a “grave and sudden provocation” it was a culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

The court reduced his sentence from life term to 10 years in prison.

As carried in TH