On June 17, 2025, the Calcutta High Court commuted the death sentence of a 45‑year‑old man, convicted in a 2013 Kidderpore case for the rape and murder of a two-and-a-half-year-old child in Kolkata. The court held that, despite the heinous nature of the crime, it did not fit the “rarest of rare” threshold required for capital punishment. Moreover, the convict’s mild mental disability was a key mitigating factor. Instead, his sentence was altered to life imprisonment without any possibility of remission for 50 years.

sources