19. Reverting to the issue of socio-economic factors, we are not sure when this was introduced as a mitigating factor for consideration in deciding whether life imprisonment or death sentence should be awarded. Be that as it may, the earliest decision to which our attention was drawn is State of U.P. v. M.K. Anthony5 in which this Court cautioned against being overwhelmed by the gravity or brutality of the offence. As held in Bachan Singh, it is not only the crime that is of importance in the sentencing process but it is also the criminal. With this in view, this Court considered the plight of the have-not and commuted the death sentence into one of imprisonment for life. This is what this Court said in paragraph 23 of the Report: “23. The last question is what sentence should be imposed upon the respondent. The learned Sessions Judge has imposed maximum penalty that could be imposed under the law, namely, sentence of death. The murder of near and dear ones including two innocent kids is gruesome. We must however be careful lest the shocking nature of crime may induce an instinctive reaction to the dispassionate analysis of the evidence both as to offence and the sentence. One circumstance that stands out in favour of the respondent for not awarding capital punishment is that the respondent did not commit murder of his near and dear ones actuated by any lust, sense of vengeance or for gain. The plight of an economic have-not sometimes becomes so tragic that the only escape route is crime. The respondent committed murder because in his utter helplessness he could not find few chips to help his ailing wife and he saw the escape route by putting an end to their lives. This one circumstance is of such an overwhelming character that even though the crime is detestable we would refrain from imposing capital punishment. The 5 (1985) 1 SCC 505 R.P. (Crl.) No.245 of 2010 in Crl. Appeal No. 811 of 2009 Page 11 of 19