Guwahati: Supreme Court has issued notices to 25 convicts in the 2019 lynching of doctor Deben Dutta in Assam’s Jorhat district.The notices were issued while hearing an Assam govt petition challenging a Gauhati high court judgment that altered their convictions from murder to “culpable homicide not amounting to murder” and reduced their sentences to 10 years.The high court passed the order on July 30, 2025. In 2020, a Jorhat sessions court sentenced the convicts. One was awarded the death penalty, and the remaining 24 were sentenced to life imprisonment for murder under the Indian Penal Code.Representing the state, senior additional advocate general Chinmoy Sharma, assisted by advocate-on-record Ankit Roy and advocate Aditya Agarwal, argued that the high court erred in altering the convictions and reducing the sentences.The state said Dutta’s killing was not a sudden or isolated incident but a brutal and prolonged mob assault. It submitted that the attackers repeatedly assaulted him and used a sharp piece of broken glass to inflict a penetrating injury that caused massive haemorrhage.The state further alleged that the accused obstructed medical assistance and prevented efforts to take the injured doctor to hospital.It challenged the high court’s description of the incident as an “emotional outburst”, arguing that the circumstances indicated a deliberate and sustained attack warranting consideration under Section 302 of the IPC and the “rarest of rare” doctrine.The respondents have four weeks to reply.
