Calcutta, March 27: The high court today upheld the death sentence of Haru Ghosh, convicted of killing a woman and her son while out on bail in another murder case.

“People like Haru are enemies of society who have no right to live. The crimes that he committed should be termed the rarest of the rare,” a division bench of Justices G.C. Gupta and K.K. Prasad said.

A resident of Nabadwip in Nadia, Haru, 37, had been sentenced to life imprisonment in 2002 after he stabbed a person named Bhagirath Ghosh during a scuffle. The high court granted him bail a year later.

“He returned home and began selling liquor in his neighbourhood. Anima Pramanick, a housewife, objected, so he hacked her to death with a chopper on May 7, 2005. Anima’s 12-year-old son, Subhankar, who saw his mother being butchered, was throttled,” Swapan Mallik, the lawyer appearing for the state, said.

Haru was back at the Nadia court, where five witnesses deposed against him and he was sentenced to death.

“Nowadays, the court does not award capital punishment. But in this case, there were five witnesses. So the high court has rightly decided to uphold the death sentence,” Subroto Mookherjee, a high court advocate, said.

In 2004, the high court had confirmed the death sentence of Dhananjay Chatterjee, a security guard who had raped and killed a schoolgirl. He was hanged the same year in Alipore Central Jail.