In a significant ruling on sentencing powers, the Supreme Court Thursday held that a sessions court, while convicting a person of murder, cannot direct that the convict remain imprisoned for the rest of their natural life without the benefit of the statutory regime governing remission and commutation. The court said that while life imprisonment ordinarily means imprisonment for the remainder of a convict’s life, a trial court does not have the power to impose a special-category sentence that effectively takes away the statutory authority to consider remission or commutation.
A Bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and Vipul M Pancholi said such special-category sentences fall within the domain of constitutional courts and cannot be imposed by sessions courts. The ruling came while the Bench dealt with appeals arising from the 2009 murder of a woman and her two minor daughters in Ludhiana, Punjab, in which the trial court had ordered the convicts to remain imprisoned for the rest of their lives.
Sessions court’s powers limited
Referring to earlier Supreme Court judgments on life sentences and remission, the Bench said the distinction between ordinary life imprisonment and a special-category sentence excluding remission was crucial. “Although life imprisonment denotes imprisonment for the remainder of the life of convict, the statutory powers of remission and commutation cannot be curtailed by a Sessions Court and thus, the power to impose a special category sentence of life imprisonment without remission belongs to the Constitutional Courts and not to the Sessions Court,” it said.
The court held that the powers of remission and commutation provided under the Code of Criminal Procedure form part of the statutory framework and cannot be eliminated through a sentencing direction issued by a sessions judge. Consequently, a trial court direction stating that a person sentenced to life imprisonment must remain incarcerated until the end of their natural life would conflict with the statutory scheme.
The Bench clarified that a sessions court remains fully competent to impose life imprisonment for murder under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code. What it cannot do is attach a condition that converts the punishment into a special-category sentence under which the convict is denied consideration for remission or commutation for the entirety of their natural life.
Triple murder conviction upheld
The ruling arose from appeals filed by Naval Kishore and another convict in connection with the December 2009 murders of Pinki alias Simran and her daughters Divya, aged eight, and Pooja, aged five, in Ludhiana. A trial court convicted the accused in 2014 under Section 302 read with Section 34 of the IPC and sentenced them to rigorous imprisonment for life, while specifically directing that they “remain in prison till rest of their life” and imposing a fine of Rs 2,500 each.
The Punjab and Haryana High Court dismissed their appeal on December 12, 2022, affirming both their conviction and sentence. The convicts subsequently approached the Supreme Court, where one of the principal questions was whether the trial court possessed the authority to impose the additional condition that they remain incarcerated for their entire natural lives.
The Supreme Court found no reason to interfere with their conviction for murder and upheld the finding of guilt under Section 302 read with Section 34 of the IPC. It, however, held that the trial court had exceeded its sentencing jurisdiction when it directed that the convicts remain in prison for the remainder of their lives.
Natural-life direction set aside
“We are of the view that there is no doubt that the Trial Court was competent to impose the punishment of imprisonment for life upon the appellants for the offence under Section 302 read with Section 34 IPC,” the Bench said. It added that the trial court was nevertheless not competent to impose a special-category sentence requiring them “to remain in prison till rest of their life”, since such a direction effectively excluded the statutory powers of remission and commutation.
The Supreme Court consequently set aside that portion of the sentence and substituted it with rigorous imprisonment for 25 years without the benefit of statutory remission. “The direction requiring the appellants ‘to remain in prison till the rest of their life’ is hereby set aside and in substitution thereof, both the appellants are sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for a period of 25 years, without the benefit of any statutory remission,” the court said.
The ruling thus draws a clear line between the sentencing powers available to trial courts and those exercised by constitutional courts in exceptional cases. While a sessions judge can impose life imprisonment for murder, the Supreme Court held that the judge cannot transform it into an irreducible natural-life term by independently shutting the door on statutory remission and commutation.