Bombay High Court commutes death sentence of two men in 2013 Vipin Bafna murder case

The Bombay High Court in Mumbai has commuted the death sentences of two men to life imprisonment for the 2013 kidnapping and murder of a college student, Vipin Bafna. In a ruling delivered on June 25, 2026, and made public the week of July 9, 2026, Justices Bharati Dangre and Manjusha Deshpande determined that the crime did not meet the "rarest of rare" threshold required for the death penalty.

The convicts, Chetan Yashwantrao Pagare and Aman Prakatsingh Jat, were previously sentenced to death by a trial court for kidnapping the Nashik youth for ransom, murdering him, and destroying evidence. The High Court upheld their convictions but modified the sentence.

The 71-page judgment noted that Pagare and Jat, who were aged 25 and 22 at the time of the offence, were driven by the desire to acquire easy wealth through illegal means. The bench observed that the two young men chose a simple mechanism of abducting a boy known to them in an attempt to get rich.

While the judges described the murder as abhorrent, involving multiple injuries and the disposal of the body in an isolated place, they stated that this alone was not sufficient to categorise the case as "rarest of rare."

The court also noted that although the accused had other criminal cases registered against them, they had not been convicted in any of those cases. The bench observed that they were not professional killers but were lured by the temptation of wealth.

According to the judgment, when the ransom calls failed, the accused impulsively decided to eliminate Bafna out of fear that he would expose them if released.

Although the bench described the kidnapping, confinement, and murder as a preplanned and concerted effort that was inhuman, cruel, and ruthless, they concluded that a death sentence was not justified. The court noted that while every penalty is intended to create a deterrent effect, not every murder warrants the death penalty.

The prosecution established the guilt of the accused beyond reasonable doubt through an unbroken chain of circumstantial evidence, including witness testimony, recoveries, forensic evidence, call detail records, and video recordings.

Consequently, the High Court dismissed the convicts' appeals against their conviction but allowed their appeals on the sentence, commuting the death penalty to life imprisonment. The court also disposed of the State's confirmation case seeking the death penalty's confirmation.