A ray of hope for life convicts

The recent ruling from the Supreme Court that two or more consecutive life sentences cannot be awarded gives a ray of hope for life convicts to be freed if they get remission from the state government concerned.

Interpreting Section 31 in the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) which gives powers for award for consecutive sentences, the court said any direction that requires the offender to undergo imprisonment for life twice over would be anomalous and irrational for it will disregard the fact that humans, like all other living beings, have but one life to live. The five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice T.S. Thakur said the provisions of Section 31 CrPC must be so interpreted as to be consistent with the basic tenet that a life sentence requires the prisoner to spend the rest of his life in prison. The legal position is, thus, fairly well settled that imprisonment for life is a sentence for the remainder of the life of the offender unless of course the remaining sentence is commuted or remitted by the competent authority. With a number of countries in the world abolishing death sentence, the sentencing policy of the Supreme Court has changed over the years going by the number of death sentences awarded or being confirmed. Retribution has an important role to play in punishment. However, it cannot be reduced to vengeance. The Law Commission has also suggested abolition of death sentence and as a result there has been an increasing trend for award of life sentence. The notion of “an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” has no place in our constitutionally mediated criminal justice system. Capital punishment fails to achieve any constitutionally valid penological goals.

In some cases, crimes are committed in a diabolic manner in total violation of the rule of law prevailing in an organised society. Further, we find that criminals of all types of crimes are on the rise. Be it white collar crimes, crimes against children and women, hapless widow, old-aged parents, sexual offences, retaliation murder, planned and calculated murder through paid assassins, gangsters operating in the developed cities indulging in killing for a price, kidnapping and killing for ransom, killing by terrorists and militants, organised crime syndicates, etc., are the order of the day.

The apex court in a catena of judgments had said that peace-loving citizens who are in the majority are solely concerned with their peaceful existence by following the rule of law. People aspire to thrive in the society anticipating every protection and support from the governance of the state and its administration.

It is also common knowledge that the disposal of cases by courts is getting delayed for variety of reasons. Major among them are the disproportionate judges, population ratio and lack of proper infrastructure for the institution of judiciary. Chief Justice Thakur recently broke down over the inadequate strength of the judges and the resultant delay in disposal of cases. In 2009, when the statistics was taken it was found that the population ratio of the judges was eight judges for one million people in India, whereas it was 50 judges per million in the Western countries.

Punishment should always be proportionate or it should commensurate to the gravity of offence. Instead, death can be substituted by the punishment of imprisonment for life and put that category beyond application of remission. In the normal course, it takes a minimum of a year for a murder case being tried and concluded, while the appeal arising out of such concluded trial at the high court level takes not less than 5-10 years and when it reaches this court, it takes a minimum of another five years for the ultimate conclusion. This is an important factor in the award of life sentence rather than capital punishment.

In this scenario, the recent ruling that trial court or the high court cannot award consecutive life sentences for multiple murders and such sentences should run only concurrently will benefit a large number of accused. Consecutive prison terms for those convicted of more than one offence in a single trial are infrequent in India. When those who have attracted great public odium by the enormity of their crimes are found guilty, the judges are seen to have the option of awarding sentences that are “consecutive”, to be undergone one after another as opposed to concurrently, where the longest jail term subsumes the shorter ones.

The Supreme Court has now given clarity on the question of whether two or more sentences of life imprisonment can be made to run one after another. Accordingly, judgments that run contrary to this principle have been overruled. Consecutive sentences are still permissible if one is a fixed term and the other is one of life, provided the term sentence is completed first and the life sentence begins later.

Normally a life convict is eligible for remission from the state for his good behaviour in prison after a minimum of 14 years. The period varies from state to state and the minimum years of life sentence is provided in the jail manual. With consecutive jail terms is no longer permissible, all life convicts are now eligible for grant of remission subject to fulfilment of other conditions.