Delhi High Court prematurely releases two rape convicts on life sentence

The Delhi High Court on Monday prematurely released a rape convict on life sentence after he spent over thirty years in custody, stating that continued imprisonment cannot be based on a “wrathful and vengeful system” which transforms punishment into “retributive death by incarceration”.

Justice Anup J Bhambhani, while also granting the relief to another rape convict who spent 15 years in custody, said that continued incarceration of life convicts must be justified on “legitimate penological grounds” that aim for a balance between punishment, deterrence, protection of the public, and rehabilitation.

The court passed the judgement on petitions by the two convicts challenging the decision of the Sentence Review Board (SRB) to reject their pleas for premature release.

“A policy under which punishment becomes progressively greater with the passage of time – as it invariably would in the case of a life sentence – would not comport with the loftier concept of justice, but would descend into a wrathful and vengeful system, transforming a life sentence into retributive death by incarceration and would render the state’s reformative machinery redundant,” Justice Bhambhani said.

Quoting from Anton Chekhov’s short story ‘The Bet’, he said, “Capital punishment kills a man at once, but lifelong imprisonment kills him slowly. Which executioner is the more humane, he who kills you in a few minutes or he who drags the life out of you in the course of many years?”

Petitioner Ramesh, who was guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and rape, was 19 years old at the time of the incident in 1992, and had since suffered more than 31 years of actual incarceration and over 40 years with remission.

His plea for premature release was rejected eighteen times. He raped a 4-year-old child as an act of vengeance after the child’s mother refused his marriage proposal.

The court stated that the SRB rejected Ramesh’s plea for premature release while invoking “broad expressions” like “desperation crime”, “shakes the confidence of the society” and that his premature release would not be “in the interest of society at large”.

The SRB, however, neither undertook any “structured, criteria-based assessment” mandated by the applicable rules and judicial directions nor considered his “consistently good jail conduct and his demonstrated rehabilitation”, it added.

The court emphasised that concerns over a “wrong” or “negative” message to society cannot be a relevant factor to decide such issues and that the gravity of the offence and the length of the sentence are “static and historical facts”, which are, by themselves, not relevant considerations while deciding a plea for premature release.

“Ramesh has undergone more than 31 years of actual imprisonment and over 40 years of incarceration with remission, and during this period, he has not received a single jail warning, punishment, or adverse report over 03 decades. He has remained gainfully employed in Tihar’s Printing Unit for more than 25 years, earning around Rs. 412/- per day, and has acquired multiple skill-development certificates,” it said.

Stating that the SRB’s decision suffered from manifest arbitrariness and violation of Article 21, resulting in palpable failure of justice, the court ordered, “It is directed that the petitioner Ramesh s/o Jaswant be released from custody forthwith.”

With respect to petitioner Tasleem, the court observed that he was around 28-years-old and the SRB relied on “irrelevant” factors to deny him relief, which included the gravity of the original offence, “wrong message” to society and abstract harm to public faith.

SRB, while disregarding the mandatory considerations of post-conviction conduct, favourable institutional and police reports, successful releases, family hardship, repeatedly recycled stereotyped reasoning, rendering their decisions arbitrary and violative of Article 21, the court held.

Tasleem’s plea for premature release was rejected by the SRB four times. He was accused of raping a Nepali woman.