The Supreme Court has said, the ‘rarest of rare case’ test is not ‘judge centric’ but depends on the perception of society. A bench headed by Justice K S Radhakrishnan said, Courts award death sentence, because the situation demands, due to constitutional compulsion, reflected by the will of the people, and not judge-centric. It said, to award death sentence, the aggravating circumstances have to be fully satisfied and there should be no mitigating circumstance favouring the accused. The bench said, even if both the tests are satisfied as against the accused, even then the court has to finally apply the rarest of rare cases test. It depends on whether the society will approve the awarding of death sentence to certain types of crime.

The observations were made in a judgment by the apex court which commuted the death penalty awarded to two men for hacking to death four members of a family in August, 2000 over a property dispute, in Punjab.