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RTI: Lifers freed early in Punjab, Haryana
Pradeep Sharma
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 21
Lifers, convicted of most-heinous crime-murder, are walking free early in Punjab and Haryana. With the Punjab and Haryana governments misusing Governor’s powers of granting remission even before the completion of mandatory 14 years’ imprisonment for life convicts with impunity, at least 65 convicts have been released prematurely by the respective governments.

A majority of the convicted persons have been released on “frivolous grounds” after completion of 10 years’ sentence under Article 161 of the Indian Constitution, which empowers the Governor to remit the sentence by way of compassion in “exceptional and deserving” cases.

Data collected by Chandigarh-based advocate and RTI activist HC Arora suggests that since January 1, 2012, a majority of the convicts have got remission in sentences on the basis of such trivial reasons as “there was no male member to look after the household or farming” and the “family was not in good financial condition”.

The remission of sentences by the respective state governments goes against the spirit of recent Supreme Court judgment that said pre-mature release of the murder convicts before 14 years of actual imprisonment, as envisaged under Section 433-A of the CrPC, was a mockery of sentencing,” alleged Arora.

While 39 murder convicts had walked free in Punjab (13 from Ludhiana, nine from Patiala and 17 from Ludhiana jails), 26 convicted have been released prematurely in Haryana (10 from Ambala, seven from Gurgaon, one from Jind, two from Rohtak and six from Kurukshetra).

Under Article 161 of the Constitution, the Governor, on the recommendation of the state government, can grant remission in life sentence to murder convicts after 10 years (eight years for female convicts) in exceptional cases.