imprisonment will just not suffice in the facts of the case. 60. The rarest of rare dictum serves as a guideline in enforcing Section 354(3) and entrenches the policy that life imprisonment is the rule and death punishment is an exception. It is a settled law of interpretation that exceptions are to be construed narrowly. That being the case, the rarest of rare dictum places an extraordinary burden on the court, in case it selects death punishment as the favoured penalty, to carry out an objective assessment of facts to satisfy the exceptions ingrained in the rarest of rare dictum. 61. The background analysis leading to the conclusion that the case belongs to the rarest of rare category must conform to highest standards of judicial rigor and thoroughness as the norm under analysis is an exceptionally narrow exception. A conclusion as to the rarest of rare aspect with respect to a matter shall entail identification of aggravating and mitigating circumstances relating both to the crime and the criminal. It was in this context noted: (Bachan Singh case, SCC p. 738, para 161 “161. … The expression ‘special reasons’ in the context of this provision, obviously means ‘exceptional reasons’ founded on the exceptionally grave circumstances of the particular case relating to the crime as well as the criminal.”” (Emphasis supplied) 12. In Shankar Kisanrao Khade v. State of Maharashtra5 this Court looked at the manner in which the aggravating and mitigating circumstances are to be weighed and how the rarest of rare test is to be applied while awarding death sentence and held thus: “52. Aggravating circumstances as pointed out above, of course, are not exhaustive so also the mitigating circumstances. In my considered view, the tests that we 5 (2013) 5 SCC 546 13