29 August, 2009

SC gives 35 years in jail for twin murders

In A First, Court Quantifies Life Term, Normally Up For Parole In 14 Yrs

The Supreme Court has sent a man convicted for a double murder to an unprecedented 35 years in prison, with the caveat that he could not be set free after the mandatory 14 years. Aware that the state government has power to grant parole to a lifer after he serves a minimum of 14 years, the apex court said in this case the convict would serve a minimum of 35 years behind bars.
The court, in an earlier judgment in the Swamy Shradhanand case, had leaned in favour of life term to the accused Shradhanand alias Murli Manohar Mishra instead of death penalty and clarified that the accused would never be released from prison, that is he would remain in prison for the rest of his life.
However, this is the first case where the apex court has quantified the prison term and pegged it at a much higher 35 years than the conventional belief that a lifer was entitled to be released on parole or commutation of sentence after serving 14 years in jail.
A Bench comprising Justices V S Sirpurkar and Deepak Verma said though it was tempted to send the convict Haru Ghosh to prison for the rest of his life like in the Shardhanad case, it was not doing so keeping in mind the fact that he had two minor children.
“We observe that life imprisonment in case of the accused shall not be less than 35 years of actual jail sentence, meaning thereby, the accused will have to remain in jail for a minimum of 35 years,” the Bench said.
The Calcutta High Court had confirmed the trial court verdict awarding death penalty to Ghosh. Ghosh had killed 30-year-old Amina Pramanik and her 12-year-old son Subhankar on May 7, 2005, enraged by her husband’s repeated protests asking him not to consume country liquor in a locality at Nawadeep in West Bengal. Ghosh was already sentenced to life imprisonment in another matter and had come to the locality from prison on bail.
Source:- The Times of India 28 August 2009 Page 13 Delhi

No comments: