Will life term now mean 30 years in jail?

Dhananjay Mahapatra, TNN | May 16, 2012, 12.28AM IST

NEW DELHI: Increasingly reluctant to award death penalty even in the

"rarest of rare cases" involving unspeakable brutality, the judiciary appears to be
gradually enhancing the spell of life term to not less than 30 years in order to meet
society's cry for adequate punishment for heinous crimes.

Those sentenced for life, strictly speaking, are supposed to spend their remaining
years behind bars. In practice, however, life imprisonment means incarceration for
14 years when lifers become entitled to remission of the rest of the sentence as per
Prison Manual provisions.

That might change as the apex court seeks to balance the growing judicial aversion
towards imposing death sentences with the need to deter heinous crimes. In
potentially trendsetting verdicts, an SC bench of Justices B S Chauhan and F M I
Kalifulla set the 30-year imprisonment benchmark for two accused - a father who
raped and killed his four-year-old daughter and the other who brutally killed his
girlfriend after she refused to abort her pregnancy.

Justice Chauhan wrote the judgment for the bench in punishing the father
while Justice Kalifulla imposed the 30-year prison term on the boy who killed his
girlfriend for her refusal to abort the fetus after having lured her away to Haridwar
with the promise to marry her.

The common thread in the two judgments separated by three days, one on May 8
and the other on May 11, was the well-settled principle "life sentence is the rule and
death is an exception", and that the application of "rarest of rare case" principle
differed from case to case.

In the May 8 judgment awarding 30-year jail term to the accused father, Justice
Chauhan said, "We are of the considered opinion that the case does not fall within
the rarest of rare cases. However, considering the nature of offence, age and
relationship of the victim with the appellant and gravity of injuries caused to her,
appellant cannot be awarded a lenient punishment. Thus, in the facts and
circumstances of the case, we set aside the death sentence and award life
imprisonment. The appellant must serve a minimum of 30 years in jail without
remission, before consideration of his case for premature release."

In the May 11 judgment, Justice Kalifulla explained that the "rarest of rare case"
principle could be applied in a "deliberately planned crime, executed meticulously in
a diabolic manner, exhibiting inhuman conduct in a ghastly manner touching the
conscience of everyone, thereby disturbing the moral fiber of society", which would
call for imposition of capital punishment in order to ensure that it acted as a
deterrent.

The bench of Justices Chauhan and Kalifulla was convinced that the boyfriend,
Sandeep, deserved no leniency given the manner in which the young woman became
a victim of the "avaricious conduct and lust" of the appellant and the manner in
which her life was snatched away by causing multiple injuries all over her body with
all kinds of weapons.

The bench said, "Imposition of death penalty to the accused Sandeep was not
warranted and while awarding life imprisonment, we hold that accused Sandeep
must serve a minimum of 30 years in jail without remission before consideration of
his case for premature release."

In the Swami Shraddhanand case, the apex court had set aside the death penalty but
ordered that the accused would remain in prison till the end of his life. There are
other instances where the court has specified that the accused must spend at least 20
years in prison before being entitled for remission.

But these two consecutive judgments asking the accused to spend a mandatory 30
years in prison has set the bar up in murder cases where the court awards life
sentence while setting aside death penalty given to him by the trial court and upheld
by the high court.

Times View

The world over, the trend is towards abolishing the death penalty. We have
advocated that India too should move in that direction, except in cases of crimes like
terrorism. What complicates the debate, however, is the fact that a life sentence in
India has more often than not actually meant 14 years. We have consistently argued
that life must mean life. Where the courts feel 14 years is sufficient punishment for a
crime, they should spell it out as a 14-year sentence. And life sentences should mean
imprisonment till death. That would strengthen the case for doing away with the
death penalty without seriously harming the idea of punishment as deterrent. Seen
in this context, the move from 14 years to 30 years is a step in the right direction, but
perhaps not enough.