Supreme Court of India· 24 September 2026

Must the State establish that a convict is beyond reformation before the sentence of death can be sustained?

WARIS v. THE STATE OF MADHYA PRADESH

2026 INSC 1050 · CRIMINAL APPEAL NOS. 429-430/2020
Coram: Justice Vikram Nath · Justice Sandeep Mehta · Justice Vijay Bishnoi

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Answer

The State must establish that a convict is beyond reformation before the sentence of death can be sustained.

Yes. The burden lies upon the State, under Bachan Singh, to establish that the convict is beyond the possibility of reform and poses a continuing threat requiring that his life be taken; where the State offers no such evidence, and the record instead favours reform, that possibility cannot be treated as excluded, and the alternative of life imprisonment remains open.

Headnote

Constitution of India — Article 21 — Indian Penal Code, 1860 — s.302 — s.376AB — Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 — ss.5-6 — Sentencing — Rarest of rare — Intermediate sentence — Indian Penal Code, 1860 — s.302 — Bachan Singh — Crime test and criminal test — Held: A sentencing court cannot assess the criminal test at zero while considering whether to impose the sentence of death; Bachan Singh commands that the crime be weighed together with the criminal, and a court assigning zero weight to the criminal disobeys that command. (¶182) Indian Penal Code, 1860 — s.302 — Burden on the State — Reformation — Held further: The State must establish that a convict is beyond reformation before the sentence of death can be sustained; where the State leads no such evidence, the possibility of reformation cannot be said to be excluded, and the alternative of life imprisonment is not foreclosed. (¶188, 190) Indian Penal Code, 1860 — s.302 — Union of India v. V. Sriharan — Intermediate sentence — Held further: The sentence of death is not the only adequate sentence where an intermediate sentence of imprisonment for the remainder of the convict's natural life without remission would meet the ends of justice. Death sentence commuted; conviction affirmed. (¶197, 203) Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 — s.391 — s.367 — Cure of defective cross-examination — Held further: A defect in the cross-examination of a principal witness by counsel with no opportunity to prepare can be cured by this Court directing further cross-examination, rather than requiring a fresh trial. (¶24, 26)

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In the Court's own words

Paragraph 188We come to the question upon which the recent jurisprudence of this Court has laid the greatest emphasis, and which is in our judgment is decisive of the present case, namely the probability of the reformation of the appellant, to which the remaining three grounds of the State's submission are directed. Here the state of the record is of the first importance. The burden of establishing that the appellant is beyond the possibility of reform, and is a continuing threat to society such that his life must be taken, lay upon the State, as Bachan Singh (Supra) holds. The State led no evidence whatever directed to that question. It placed nothing before the courts below, and nothing before us, to show that the appellant is incapable of reformation. On the other side, the material that is before us tells in favour of the possibility of reform, for the conduct of the appellant across eight years in custody has been satisfactory, he has been guilty of no institutional misconduct, and he has turned, so far as the confines of a prison permit, to self-improvement and to religious observance.

Paragraph 190We are conscious that conduct in the controlled environment of a prison is not a complete measure of reformation, and that it must be assessed with that limitation in mind. But the question is not whether the material proves reformation to a certainty. The question, upon the settled law, is whether the possibility of reformation can be excluded, for it is only where that possibility is excluded that the sentence of death becomes permissible. Upon a record in which the State has led no evidence of incorrigibility, in which the conduct of the convict has been without blemish, and in which the psychological evaluation discloses no condition from which incorrigibility might be inferred, the possibility of reformation cannot be said to be excluded. It remains open, and while it remains open the alternative of life imprisonment is not foreclosed.

Acts & Sections

s.302 Indian Penal Code, 1860s.376AB Indian Penal Code, 1860s.376(2)(f) Indian Penal Code, 1860s.376(2)(n) Indian Penal Code, 1860s.201 Indian Penal Code, 1860s.5 Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012s.6 Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012s.42 Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012s.391 Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973s.367 Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973

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Also decided in this judgment

Can a sentencing court assess the criminal test at zero while considering whether to impose the sentence of death?Is the sentence of death the only adequate sentence where an intermediate sentence would meet the ends of justice?Can a defect in the cross-examination of a principal witness by counsel with no opportunity to prepare be cured by directing further cross-examination?

Plain-language answer prepared by the LexStreak Editorial Desk — verify against the judgment. Source: Supreme Court of India. Corrections