New Delhi: Delhi High Court Monday ordered release of a double-murder convict serving a life sentence after incarceration for 20 years.
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.
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 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”.