This news piece is based on ‘AAP alleges cover up by cops, BJP calls it rarest of rare crime’ published in The Times of India on January 1, 2023.  

Why in News?  

Recently the Chief Minister of Delhi, called the incident of a woman's body being dragged for four kilometers by a car after hitting her scooter a "rarest of rare" crime and demanded that the accused be given the strictest punishment. 

Doctrine of Rarest of Rare 

The Doctrine of Rarest of Rare was established in the case of  Machhi Singh v. State of Punjab.  

Under this doctrine, the court could take recourse to death penalty only in the rarest of rare situation when the alternative option of life sentence, after drawing up a balance sheet of ''mitigating and aggravating factors'', is ''unquestionably foreclosed''. 

In the Machhi Singh case, the court laid down certain criteria for assessing when a case could fall within the purview of rarest to rarest. The criteria are analyzed below: 

Manner of committing murder  

Motive for murder  

Socially heinous nature of crime  

Magnitude of crime  

Personality of the victim of the murder 

There is no statutory definition of 'rarest of rare'. It depends upon facts and circumstances of a particular case, brutality of the crime, conduct of the offender, previous history of his/her involvement in crime.  

This doctrine can be divided into two sub-parts: Aggravating circumstances and Mitigating circumstances.