Remission of Sentences

Top court says the President or a governor cannot consider remission of sentence of a person convicted of a heinous crime before 14 years of the actual sentence

NEW DELHI Removing certain inconsistencies in some verdicts of the Supreme Court on the powers of the President and governors to remit the life sentences of murder convicts, the Supreme Court has held that the remission plea has to be allowed by them strictly under the terms of the 1993 policy laid down by the Union government.

Taking into consideration the parameters laid down in the policy, a bench comprising Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and Justices J.M. Panchal and B.S. Chauhan said if a person is given life sentence for heinous crimes like murder with rape, wrongful confinement, extortion, robbery, dacoity and killing a child below 14 years, the President or a governor could not consider remission before completion of 14 years of the actual sentence.

The same principle would also apply in cases where the death sentence awarded to a convict by the trial court had been converted into life sentence by the superior courts. In those henious crimes where a life sentence is awarded with the proviso that the convict should have to spend at least 20 years in prison, a remission application can be considered only after a prisoner had actually served 20 years of the sentence, the court clarified.

As per the policy, murders had been placed in five categories -murder with wrongful confinement, extortion, robbery; murder with rape; murder with dacoity; murder of a child under 14 years; and “supari“ killings by hired criminals -to make a distinction between heinous and non-heinous crimes for the purpose of considering remission applications.

In the case of non-henious murders, where the life sentence means 14 years of actual sentence, the remission application could be considered after the convict had completed 10 years in jail, the Supreme Court said.

The clarification was given by a larger bench of three judges headed by the CJI after a two-judge bench refereed the matter to it finding several “inconsistencies“ in some judgments on the issue over the past decade.

The inconsistencies had mainly arisen after the Haryana governor had released several convicts during the tenure of former chief minister Om Prakash Chautala, which came in for severe criticism in both judicial and political circles.

Taking cue from the release of several convicts during this period, another convict Jagdish, who had served more than 10 years of sentence, had approached the Punjab and Haryana high court for remission under the 1993 policy, and his petition was allowed -with a direction to the state government to consider his plea in view of at least two judgments in cases of convicts from that state.

Challenging the high court's direction, the current Bhupinder Singh Hooda government approached the Supreme Court with a plea for correcting “inconsistencies“ in its judgments, which the CJI's bench allowed and directed that henceforth remissions should be granted only according to the 1993 policy.

P.S. There is also one more sentence which the SC has missed : Life imprisonment till the last breath of  life... Various District Courts have granted the same sentence in heinous crimes in India...