After the two world wars that the world faced there is a certain change in the attitude in the international organisation and even to some countries to do away with the heinousness of the capital punishment of the offender due to the rise of the human rights consciousness. But still there are certain countries like India who still uphold the capital punishment in the rarest of the rare cases. But this paper concentrate on the same term “rarest of the rare” whose definition has been differently interpreted at different times by the supreme court of India, sometimes the apex court has set some criteria to determine the offence in the category of ‘Rarest of the Rare’ while other times it just verdict the offence as rarest of the rare on the basis of the collective consciousness of the people at large in the country. This paper tends to indicate that the collective consciousness is a myth and the whole capital punishment criteria held by the Indian Judiciary needs to be reconsidered as there is disparity in terms of the verdicts so given by the same apex court at different times but on same offences at least the gravity of crime was in similar.

Keywords: rarest of the rare, collective consciousness, capital punishment.

DOI: http://doi.one/10.1732/IJLMH.25188