A five-member bench of the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice of India H.L. Dattu, took a progressive step on Thursday in permitting state governments to free convicts serving life terms if they had undergone a minimum of 14 years already and displayed good conduct. The SC anchored its decision in the humanist perspective, arguing that the condition of a person literally serving out the whole of his life in jail was worse than someone sentenced to death.
Of course, the opinion is deeply circumscribed. It won’t apply to convicts in a number of categories — those serving a term for rape-cum-murder, prisoners in respect of whom the SC had itself specified a fixed term beyond 14 years (say 20 or 25 years), those convicted under a Central law (say Pota) or whose case was investigated by a Central agency. Essentially, the new opinion pertains to IPC cases — barring rape-cum-murder — regarding those lodged in prisons for more than 14 years. Even so, a very large number of prisoners will gain freedom and some may even find it possible to return to families.
The seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case will not be benefited under the dispensation outlined since the apex court itself is looking at the action of the Tamil Nadu government which had decided in July 2014 to remit the life sentences of the killers of the former Prime Minister. When this happened — and no one had any doubt that the motive of the Jayalalithaa government was political to the extreme — the SC found itself stepping in with a restraint order. Thus restraint was placed upon powers of state governments to remit life sentences after 14 years. The Thursday decision of the apex court lifts this restraint.
Particularly in light of the recent pronouncement, it is up to Parliament to legislate and specify the meaning of a life-term. It need not be 14 years, but a longer period. But a convicted person should have the sense that there might yet be a future after the fixed number of years have been served out. If this happens, then the power of remission of states will be rendered infructuous. In an age in which leading democracies — with US being the lone exception — have moved away even from the death penalty, it is consistent with the ethos of the value of life not to lock people away forever. That’s like consigning someone to a medieval dungeon. The matter needs debate, and it’s not a day too soon.
