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On March 10, 2026, the Supreme Court stayed the death penalty of Atul Nihale, who was convicted of raping and murdering a five-year-old girl in 2024 in the Shahjahanabad neighborhood of the city of Bhopal. The interim order was granted by a bench that included Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta, and N.V. Anjaria when Nihale sought the court's review of the January 2026 decision of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, which affirmed the death sentence issued by the trial court, based on the rarest of rare doctrine.

The HC had referred to the barbarity of the crime as dripping down of every ounce of evidence and mentioned high levels of brutality in the form of serious injuries of the child victim. However, the Supreme Court ordered a mental health examination on the convict to determine mental health, conduct in prison, and mitigation determinations prior to final adjudication.

The stay suspends execution till all the appeals are heard and disposed of. The case has rekindled societal debate on the use of capital punishment in child sexual assault-murder cases in the provisions of POCSO and Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. None of the acquittals have been issued, the conviction has been upheld, and the supreme court scrutinized the evidence and procedure.