Suspend life sentence only if court made clear error: Supreme Court | News from India

NEW DELHI: Drawing a distinction between imprisonment for a fixed term and life imprisonment, the Supreme Court on Friday said that constitutional courts would not grant parole to a life sentence unless they were prima facie convinced that the impugned judgment was not justifiable.

Regarding the application for suspension of life imprisonment in a murder case in which a convict had been sentenced to life imprisonment, a special bench comprising Justices JB Pardiwala and Ujjal Bhuyan said, “There is a fine line between a fixed term imprisonment and a life term imprisonment.”

“Where the sentence imposed is limited to a fixed number of years, the appellate courts may exercise their discretion in suspending the sentence pending the outcome of the convicted person’s appeal, unless the prosecution points to exceptional circumstances which prevent the court from granting a suspension,” it says.

The Court noted the general principle of law that the presumption of innocence of an accused person expires when he is convicted by a court, and stated: “Where a sentence of life imprisonment is involved, the only criterion which the appellate court must apply is whether there is anything tangible or obvious on the record which would enable the appellate court to consider prima facie that the conviction is untenable or that the convicted person has a good prospect of success on appeal.”

The Supreme Court, however, said that the appellate court cannot re-evaluate evidence in such cases. The court order to record these observations came in a case from Gujarat. Justices Pardiwala and Bhuyan said that since the Supreme Court had prima facie found that the trial court had correctly evaluated the evidence, there was little scope for the Supreme Court to interfere.

At this point, senior advocate Rauf Rahim argued that the man has no criminal record and that his sentence should be suspended as he has to take care of his widowed daughter-in-law who has three minor children. He also informed the court that the appeal against the conviction was filed in the Supreme Court last year and hence there is little chance of it being decided in the near future.

On humanitarian grounds, the High Court issued notice to the Government of Gujarat on the convict’s application for suspension of sentence and scheduled the case for hearing in four weeks.