The 'rarest of rare case' test is not 'judge centric' but depends on the perception of society and whether it would approve the award of death sentence to those convicted in certain types of crimes, the Supreme Court has held.

Translation :

"We listen to the howling of the baying mob, and when the decibels exceed a certain value, we award the death penalty".

Oh. One more thing.

"All that nonsense about acting without fear or favour - forget it".

".... that is whether the society will approve the awarding of death sentence to certain types of crime,"

Really!!! So captial punishment is based on the judge's perception, god knows determined how, that society (and interestingly ours isn't a monolith and as diverse as it can be imagined, we so proudly proclaim from the tree-tops) will approve the death sentence - in some sense a popularity context. And this for a punishment that is "FULL & FINAL", i.e., once enacted irreversible. If there is a screw up - there is a screw up and the fig leaf of the "process of law" prevailed is all that is left to protect us. He is also indirectly accepting - that death sentence is really society's revenge/retribution for some "crimes" and interestingly the "some" might be subject to amongst other things malaise existing at the time in society too.

I do often scratch my head and wonder the quality of our judges, given some of the editorial/side comments they keep passing. I guess no part of society, judges included can escape the deep malaise of "kaljug" we as a society find ourselves in.

Judicial gobbledegook does not hide the basic arbitrariness in many of these decisions. I certainly do not envy the justices their task.