The Supreme Court (SC) has overturned its own verdict to commute sentence of former APF DIG Ranjan Koirala who was found guilty of murdering his wife.
Hearing the review petition registered by the Office of the Attorney General against the decision of the then Chief Justice Cholendra Shumsher Rana and Justice Tej Bahadur KC to commute Koirala’s sentence on June 29, 2020, a joint bench of Justices Deepak Karki, Kumar Chudal and Tanka Moktan on Thursday has overturned the commutation, according to SC Spokesperson Bimal Paudel.
The Kathmandu District Court had issued life sentence with confiscation of all properties finding Koirala guilty of pre-meditated murder of his wife Geeta Dhakal and burning the body to destroy evidence and the then Patan Appellate Court had upheld the verdict when Koirala appealed against that.
A joint bench of Chief Justice Cholendra Shumsher Rana and Justice Tej Bahadur KC on June 29, 2020, however, had commuted Koirala's sentence by 11 years using discretionary powers granted by the Muluki Ain to judges stating life sentence seemed too harsh stating that the wife was the instigator of the incident as she died when he pushed her during a dispute initiated by her, raising of his two sons, who are both over 20 years in age, had been affected when he was in prison and it looked a chance incident.
Koirala was released on the same day after serving eight and half years.
The Office of the Attorney General had filed the review petition as per constitutional provision and the Apex Court had decided to review it pointing that the use of the discretionary powers by the bench of Rana and KC in the commutation was against the legal principles propounded earlier by the SC.
