Premature release of prisoners: Delhi HC suggests reconstitution of Sentence Review Board, fine-tuning 2004 policy
Hearing a murder convict's plea for premature release, the Delhi High Court on Wednesday referenced the reformatory policy of remission in Kautilya's Arthashastra and suggested that 'the competent authority' deliberate upon the composition of the Sentence Review Board (SRB) and reconstitute the same. It also suggested fine-tuning Delhi's 2004 sentence review policy.
Justice Girish Kathpalia was dealing with a plea by a convict, who was serving life imprisonment for murder committed in 2001. He was seeking premature release after spending more than 21 years in prison with remission.
The convict's case for premature release had been rejected by the SRB five times between 2020 and 2023, compelling him to then seek a direction from the Delhi High Court. On Wednesday, the Delhi High Court directed the SRB to consider his case afresh. It further directed the SRB, that in case it does not find it to be a fit case to grant premature release to the convict, 'the decision of SRB shall be worded in a manner that one can decipher as to what worked in the mind of SRB'.
Holding that the SRB's decision of denial of premature release to the convict 'suffers from vices of non-application of mind and completely mechanical approach to such a sensitive issue', Justice Kathpalia noted, 'The composition of the SRB would make this court assume that each matter is discussed threadbare in such meetings. But unfortunately, the manner in which minutes of these meetings were worded, the allegation of non-application of mind cannot be brushed aside.'
'Every instrumentality of the State, be it judicial or administrative, while deciding an issue must author the decision in such manner that deciphers what worked in the mind of the authority concerned. The court must have material before it to examine as to whether there was proper application of mind or not. In the present case, there is nothing on record to suggest proper application of mind by the SRB,' he added.
Placing faith in the convict's reformation, the court observed, 'I have no doubt that the petitioner stands substantially reformed and can become a useful member of the society. Keeping the petitioner in jail for further period would not yield any fruitful result towards his reformation or to the society at large.'
Making a case for applying the reformatory tool of premature release or remission, the court recorded, 'Not that due to passage of time, the inherent perversity of the crime per se diminishes in any manner. But for the purposes of reformative sentencing, such long incarceration, as already suffered by the petitioner, the perversity must be visualised as faded. The wound suffered by the kith and kin of the deceased, which was fresh in the year 2001, would have by now reduced to scab.'
'Time heals all wounds. This is the only way to fathom in order to ensure purposive application of the reformatory tool of premature release, otherwise no convict would be ever granted an opportunity to reform himself. For, life imprisonment, by its very nature is awarded in gruesome offences where the appropriate punishment is a bit short of awarding capital sentence. A punishment, to be scientific has to have an end somewhere during lifetime of the convict,' Justice Kathpalia said.
While the state had opposed the convict's plea, referring to his misconduct in 2015 when he had jumped parole and his re-arrest in two more criminal cases, the court did not concur with the state's view.
'…citing this misconduct, the SRB has repeatedly denied premature release to the petitioner. Some point of time has to be there, when aftereffects of such misconduct must taper down. It has been more than a decade since the petitioner jumped parole and got involved in those two cases. After the year 2015, there is not even a whiff of any allegation of any jail misconduct on the part of the petitioner. Rather, as observed hereafter, subsequently the petitioner was awarded a number of commendations by the jail authorities. Most significantly, as discussed above, the petitioner stands acquitted in those two cases,' the court reasoned.
The convict was issued six commendation certificates while in jail, which included appreciation for his work and performance on Republic Days, and his work in assisting jail administration in fighting COVID-19.
Taking the commendation certificates into account, the court noted, '…the petitioner had done an extraordinary job in the jail in fight against Corona, due to which the jail administration succeeded in keeping Corona free the jail no.2, even while admitting and quarantining more than 8,200 newly admitted prisoners. These certificates, coupled with the fact that across a period of time, the petitioner was released on parole and furlough more than once show a substantial reformative growth of the petitioner, which is a vital indicator of reduced propensity to commit crime again.'
'As regards possibility of the petitioner committing crime again, merely because he has not physically attained old age, it cannot be said that there are higher chances of his committing crime again. Bodily strength has no
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