The Himachal Pradesh High Court on Tuesday commuted the death penalty of two men convicted in the 2014 kidnapping and murder of four-year-old Shimla boy, Yug Gupta, to life imprisonment, while acquitting a third accused of all charges.

A division bench of Justice Vivek Singh Thakur and Justice Rakesh Kainthla ruled that convicts Chander Sharma (26) and Vikrant Bakshi (22) would serve life terms “till their last breath,” but found insufficient evidence to uphold the trial court’s award of capital punishment. Tejinder Pal (29) was acquitted.

The bench held that the evidence presented did not justify the “rarest of rare” classification necessary for a death sentence.

“The material on record does not show that the accused cannot be reformed, hence we are unable to confirm the death pe

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