New Delhi: Delhi High Court Monday ordered release of a double-murder convict serving a life sentence after incarceration for 20 years.Justice Girish Kathpalia underlined that the decision was “rooted” in the philosophy propagated by ancient texts such as the Rig Veda, Kautilya’s Arthashastra and the Dandashastra, as he stressed that reformation of criminals, and not deterrence or retribution, was more productive for the larger goals of peace in society.Citing author Oscar Wilde’s “No saint is without a past, no sinner is without a future”, the court emphasised that individuals should not be defined by their worst actions, but by their future choices. It noted that “every darkness carries in it a hope for light and every light holds a memory of darkness”, describing this path as the “track” of reformative sentencing.The convict, who challenged Sentence Review Board’s (SRB) 2025 decision rejecting his plea for premature release, had fatally stabbed two persons in Dec 2004 and stolen their belongings. A trial court convicted and sentenced him to life imprisonment in 2010.Rejecting the state’s objection that the petitioner had committed a “gruesome” offence, HC said he was 19 years old at that time, and by now, the wound suffered by the kith and kin of the deceased would have reduced to a scab.It also considered that the petitioner was admittedly not a habitual or an occupational criminal, which was a vital factor in determining the possibility of his reform. “The petitioner has already undergone incarceration for more than 20 years. Not that due to passage of time the inherent perversity of the crime per se diminishes in any manner, but for meaningful sentencing, on account of such long incarceration as suffered by the petitioner, the perversity must be visualised as faded,” it said.The court held SRB’s decision to reject the plea for premature release was legally unsustainable on account of non-application of mind, observing that the authorities opted to ignore “vital circumstances” in a mechanical manner, if not biased with “criminophobia”.It also refused to send the matter to SRB for fresh consideration, stating that the question of the petitioner’s premature release was repeatedly considered by the authorities in an unscientific and casual manner.
