Aggravating and Mitigating Circumstances

In one line

A sentencing court draws up two lists, and the Indian lists come from Bachan Singh, from Machhi Singh and, for the material that fills them, from Manoj.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: aggravating circumstances are those which increase the seriousness of the offence or the culpability of the offender and so justify a heavier sentence; mitigating circumstances are those which reduce them. India has no statutory list for offences generally. The working lists come from Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab, (1980) 2 SCC 684, which accepted four aggravating and seven mitigating circumstances as relevant and of great weight while declining to make either list exhaustive; from Machhi Singh v. State of Punjab, (1983) 3 SCC 470, which grouped the aggravating circumstances of the crime under five heads; and from Manoj v. State of Madhya Pradesh, decided 20 May 2022, which specifies the material the State must collect so that the mitigating list can be applied at all.

The aggravating list

From Bachan Singh, which accepted the circumstances urged in argument as relevant, a court may impose the graver penalty where:

• the offence has been committed after previous planning and involves extreme brutality;
• it involves exceptional depravity;
• it is committed against a member of the armed forces of the Union, a police force or a public servant, while on duty or in consequence of the lawful discharge of duty, whether or not they were still serving at the time; or
• it is committed against a person acting in the lawful discharge of a duty under the arrest provisions of the Code, or who had assisted a Magistrate or a police officer requiring assistance.

And the qualification, which is the important part: to qualify as an aggravating circumstance, a circumstance found on the facts of a particular case must evidence aggravation of an abnormal or special degree. An ordinary feature of the offence is not an aggravating circumstance; it is the offence.

Machhi Singh's five heads group the same idea by reference to the crime: the manner of commission, the motive, the anti-social or socially abhorrent nature of the crime, the magnitude of the crime, and the personality of the victim. See [Machhi Singh and the Five Categories].

The mitigating list

From Bachan Singh:

1. that the offence was committed under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance;
2. the age of the accused; if the accused is young or old, he shall not be sentenced to death;
3. the probability that the accused would not commit criminal acts of violence as would constitute a continuing threat to society;
4. the probability that the accused can be reformed and rehabilitated;
5. that in the facts and circumstances the accused believed he was morally justified in committing the offence;
6. that the accused acted under the duress or domination of another person;
7. that the condition of the accused showed that he was mentally defective and that the defect impaired his capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct.