No bar on parole, furlough if appeal pending in SC: HC
It answered a reference received from a single judge that emerged from a challenge to the Delhi Prison Rules filed by several former policemen serving jail terms in the notorious
Hashimpura massacre case
of Uttar Pradesh.
"Thus, the Delhi Prison Rules do not bar consideration of parole and furlough if the matter is pending before the Supreme Court. It is an altogether different question as to whether, in the facts of a specific case, the prison authorities ought to grant parole or furlough if the Supreme Court is seized of the matter either in a special leave petition or in an appeal.
The grant or non-grant of parole and furlough on merits would depend on the facts of each case," a bench of Justices Prathiba M Singh and Amit Sharma held.
The court pointed out that there could be a situation where the apex court may have specifically refused to grant suspension of sentence or refused bail to a particular convict. "The authorities would have to bear in mind the non-grant of suspension or bail by the Supreme Court or other relevant circumstances, and the same may have an impact on the consideration of parole/furlough," it noted.
by Taboola
by Taboola
Sponsored Links
Sponsored Links
Promoted Links
Promoted Links
You May Like
Secure your family's future!
ICICI Pru Life Insurance Plan
Get Quote
Undo
You Can Also Check:
Delhi AQI
|
Weather in Delhi
|
Bank Holidays in Delhi
|
Public Holidays in Delhi
"In such cases," HC said, "a deeper scrutiny would be required by the prison authorities as to whether parole or furlough could be granted to the convict."
The bench emphasised that the mere fact that the authorities could exercise power did not mean parole or furlough ought to be granted as a matter of right, and whether relief could be granted or not was a different issue altogether and depended on the facts of each case.
Furlough and parole envisage a short-term temporary release of a convict from jail. While parole is granted to the prisoner to meet a specific exigency, furlough may be granted after a stipulated number of years have been served without any reason.
The high court was dealing with a batch of petitions by the convicts whose plea for furlough was not entertained essentially on the ground that their appeals are pending before the Supreme Court.
"To impose a bar on consideration of parole/furlough if a special leave petition or appeal is pending in the Supreme Court could have completely unpredictable consequences and could also result in practical difficulties for convicts who may require to be granted parole/furlough due to emergent situations," it highlighted.
The court put an end to an earlier interpretation of Rule 1224 of jail that barred parole/furlough being granted if the appeal is pending in the high court. Later, a court ruling extended the bar to also the pendency of appeal before the Supreme Court, which was reversed on Tuesday by the bigger bench.
The high court sent each of the petitioners back to the bench that was hearing their plea for parole/furlough, noting that a decision must be made in light of the reference answered by it.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hindu
11 minutes ago
- The Hindu
SC refuses to intervene in appeal by Lalu Prasad for stay of trial
: The Supreme Court on Friday (July 18, 2025) refused to intervene in an interim order of the Delhi High Court declining to stay a corruption trial against former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad in a land-for-jobs case. However, a Bench of Justices MM Sundresh and N. Kotiswar Singh asked the Delhi High Court to expedite the hearing in the main petition filed by Mr. Yadav to quash the criminal case registered against him by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The Bench also made it clear observations made by the High Court in the interim order would not affect the disposal of the main petition. The apex court said it did not want to comment on the case against Mr. Yadav on the basis of an appeal filed by him challenging an interim order of the High Court. The court further dispensed with the presence of Mr. Yadav from the trial proceedings after considering his age and health. Corruption case pertains to Lalu's tenure as Railway Minister Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Mr. Yadav, said the corruption case was related to Group D appointments made in the West Central Zone of the Indian Railways based in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, during Mr. Yadav's tenure as the Railway Minister between 2004 and 2009, allegedly in return for land parcels gifted or transferred by the recruits in the name of his family or associates. The case was registered on May 18, 2022, against Mr. Yadav and others, including his wife, two daughters, unidentified public officials and private persons. Mr. Sibal submitted that the FIR was lodged after a 14-year delay despite initial enquiries and investigations had led to the filing of a closure report in the competent court. He questioned why the CBI had not taken prior sanction before prosecuting Mr. Yadav, whose actions as a Minister was under question. 'The investigation cannot start without a prior sanction under Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The agency had taken sanction for all the government servants, except him [Yadav]... The enthusiasm is telling,' Mr. Sibal said. Appearing for the CBI, Additional Solicitor General SV Raju countered that sanction was not required as the offence was allegedly committed prior to the 2018 amendment of the Act inserting Section 17A. Mr. Sibal responded that the FIR however was registered in 2021, post the amendment. The Bench said it did not want to look into the merits and facts of the case, which may be left to the High Court to consider.
&w=3840&q=100)
Business Standard
11 minutes ago
- Business Standard
Cong MPs will sign motion against Justice Varma in LS: Jairam Ramesh
A fire incident at Justice Varma's residence in the national capital in March, when he was a judge at the Delhi High Court, had led to the discovery of several burnt sacks of banknotes in the outhouse Press Trust of India New Delhi The Congress will support and its MPs will be among the signatories to the motion to be brought against Justice Yashwant Varma in the Lok Sabha, senior party leader Jairam Ramesh said on Friday, asserting that then-CJI Sanjiv Khanna had "forced our hand" in the matter by writing to the president and the prime minister. In an interview with PTI, Ramesh also stressed that the opposition would strongly push the issue of Justice Shekhar Yadav, against whom 55 opposition MPs moved an impeachment notice in the Rajya Sabha last December for allegedly delivering a hate speech at a gathering last year. A fire incident at Justice Varma's residence in the national capital in March, when he was a judge at the Delhi High Court, had led to the discovery of several burnt sacks of banknotes in the outhouse. Though the judge claimed ignorance about the cash, the Supreme Court-appointed committee indicted him after speaking to a number of witnesses and recording his statement. Justice Khanna had written to the president and the prime minister, recommending the removal. Asked about the government's move in gathering signatures for moving the motion against Varma, Ramesh said, "Government cannot impeach. The Constitution, in article 124, very clearly states that it is the MPs who move a motion 100 MPs in the Lok Sabha or 50 MPs in the Rajya Sabha. "We are supporting; our MPs are also signing the motion in the Lok Sabha, and this is not for an impeachment but for setting up of a three-member committee by the Speaker under the The Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968," he said. "The committee will be set up, and it will investigate the matter, submit its report and on the basis of that report, presumably in the Winter Session of Parliament, there will be the process for the removal of the judge first in the Lok Sabha and then in the Rajya Sabha," Ramesh told PTI. He emphasised that there should be a proper investigation, citing that the action against Justice Varma was initiated based on an in-house committee report. "...we are concerned about it, and there should be a proper investigation. The former CJI has forced our hand; he has submitted a report, there was no FIR and an FIR which should have been registered. He has virtually forced the hand of MPs by submitting the report to the president and to the PM based on an in-house committee report," the Congress leader said. Referring to Justice Yadav's issue, Ramesh said, "He (Justice Yadav) violated his oath, and he violated all principles of the Constitution. Now, seven months have passed, and we still don't know. I have met (Rajya Sabha) Chairman (Jagdeep Dhankar) repeatedly, and still that motion is pending," Ramesh said. "Whether he is sitting on it on his own or he is made to sit on it, I don't know. I respect the Chairman. I expected him... to give the go-ahead," he said and added," the least we expect is that a committee is set up to examine the behaviour of Justice Yadav." His remarks came on a day Justice Varma moved the Supreme Court seeking to invalidate a report by an in-house inquiry panel, which found him guilty of misconduct in the cash discovery row. Varma has sought quashing of the May 8 recommendation by then Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna, urging Parliament to initiate impeachment against him. The government plans to move a motion to remove Varma in Parliament's Monsoon session beginning July 21. A report of the inquiry panel probing the incident had said that Justice Varma and his family members had covert or active control over the store room where a huge cache of half-burnt cash was found, proving his misconduct, which is serious enough to seek his removal. The three-judge panel headed by Chief Justice Sheel Nagu of the Punjab and Haryana High Court conducted the inquiry for 10 days, examined 55 witnesses and visited the scene of the accidental fire that started at around 11.35 pm on March 14 at the official residence Justice Varma, then a sitting judge of the Delhi High Court and now in the Allahabad High Court. Acting on the report, former Chief Justice of India Khanna wrote to President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi recommending the judge's impeachment. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India Today
11 minutes ago
- India Today
When Urdu book on Prophet got publisher killed, earned India blasphemy law
"Wait and wait for the order of God, if you are prepared for a jehad [crusade] for Rasul... The kafir [Rajpal] will not go free..." proclaimed Maulana Mohammed Ali from Delhi's Jama Masjid in July 1927. Addressing an impassioned crowd stirred by the publication of a controversial Urdu pamphlet 'Rangeela Rasool', he declared a kind of religious less than two years, in April 1929, Maulana Ali's rhetoric had turned real. The publisher of the book, Mahashe Rajpal, was stabbed to death inside his Lahore a 19-year-old Muslim carpenter, had passed by a mosque where a huge crowd had gathered, shouting slogans against the "Hindu publisher". The speaker in the masjid roared: "Oh Muslims! The devil Rajpal has sought to dishonour our beloved Prophet Muhammad with his book". The 19-year-old was so inflamed that he decided to take matters into his own hands. Rajpal's murder, an example of fighting "blasphemy with bigotry", became a watershed moment in India's pre-Partition communal history. Protests, riots and murders among Sikh, Hindu, and Muslim communities were no longer isolated bursts. It was when satire, religious reform, and provocation, especially in Punjab, where the Arya Samaj's fiery reformation movement had already stirred society, hardened communal lines.'Rangeela Rasool', the opposition to it, the legal battles and the aggressive fallout were directly linked to the enactment of the Penal Code Amendment Act XXV of India in 1927, which for the first time, criminalised "deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings", in such explicit terms that even intent, not just affect, became a century later, in 2022, the gruesome murder of Udaipur tailor Kanhaiya Lal Teli, who had shared a social media post supporting BJP leader Nupur Sharma's remarks on Prophet Muhammad, shook India. The incident has returned to the nation's consciousness, this time, because of a new movie, Udaipur Files: Kanhaiya Lal Tailor Murder. The Supreme Court is currently reviewing the allegations of "vilification of the Muslim community" through the Supreme Court, which will hear the case on July 21, has asked the Centre to decide on the film's release by debate around hate, hurt sentiments, and free speech isn't new to India's legal and social history. Among the earliest and most defining of such episodes was the Rangeela Rasool case in pre-Partition TURBULENT 1920s AND PUBLICATION OF 'RANGEELA RASOOL'The publication of 'Rangeela Rasool' in 1924 came at a time when Punjab, and especially Lahore, was a cauldron of sectarian Arya Samaj, a Hindu reformist group founded by Swami Dayanand Saraswati, had aggressively taken on orthodoxy, including in Islam, through print. In retaliation, Muslim scholars and publishers produced books using derogatory and provocative language to counter Arya Samaj's denunciations of titles and content of the books vilified Hindu phase was not yet marked by extremes, but over time, scattered tensions resulted in clashes and riots across Malabar, Bombay, United Provinces, and the region that is now Bihar, Odisha, and Bengal."Coming to the year 1927-28, the following facts stare us in the face. Between the beginning of April and the end of September 1927, no fewer than 25 riots were reported. Of these, 10 occurred in the United Provinces, six in the Bombay Presidency, and two each in the Punjab, the Central Provinces, Bengal, and Bihar and Orissa, and one in Delhi," BR Ambedkar wrote in his 1945 book, 'Thoughts On Pakistan'."The majority of these riots occurred during the celebration of a religious festival by one or other of the two communities, whilst some arose out of the playing of music by Hindus in the neighbourhood of mosques or out of the slaughter of cows by Muhammadans. The total casualties resulting from the above disorders were approximately 103 persons killed and 1,084 wounded," Ambedkar was in this charged atmosphere that 'Rangeela Rasool' dropped like a match on dry BOOK ON THE PROPHET THAT IGNITED A STORM IN INDIADespite its salacious title, the book, which has also been referred to as a pamphlet, took a tone that was more theological and argumentative than was a reading of Prophet Muhammad and his personal life, including his book was written using the pseudonym Pandit must be said to the credit of the publisher that he refused to disclose the name of the real author of the book despite the immense pressure and threats he had to book was in Urdu, the normal language of communication on the intellectual plane, according to Girja Kumar's 1997 book 'The Book on Trial: Fundamentalism and Censorship in India'.The contents of the book enraged Muslim leaders of 2024 and 2025, protests kept erupting across Punjab. The book was banned, and cases were 1926, legal proceedings began. Mahashe Rajpal was charged with promoting enmity between in May 1927, Justice Dalip Singh of the Lahore High Court ruled that Rajpal could not be prosecuted under the existing was simply no legal provision at the time that addressed insults to religious figures. While the judge described the book as "malicious", he had to acquit verdict only added fuel to the fire. Massive protests, which saw the use of inflammatory language and threats of retribution, took place across several regions in response to the violent protests, and to fill the "legal vacuum" exposed by the 'Rangeela Rasool' case, the British colonial government moved to amend the Indian Penal Code. Later in 1927, Section 295A was introduced, making it a criminal offence to deliberately and maliciously insult religious beliefs. This is how India got its law on by then, death diktats had been issued and Mahashe Rajpal, the publisher, was a marked Urdu press of Lahore made matters worse with its reporting and editorial pieces, which were criticised by Mahatma Gandhi. He called the tone "filthy".In Delhi, Maulana Mohammed Ali, addressing thousands outside Delhi's Jama Masjid, called the verdict, which led to Rajpal's release, a betrayal. He declared a "jehad" against Rajpal, the judge, and the colonial system. His words were not idle threats. They laid the ideological groundwork for extreme violent vigilantism, which we have seen in the controversies over Satanic Verses, and MF Hussain's painting of Bharat CARPENTER TURNED KILLER OVER 'RANGEELA RASOOL'By 1929, Mahashe Rajpal had dodged two assassination April 6, he was stabbed to death in his shop by Ilm-ud-Din, who had travelled from Lahore's walled city carrying a newly bought dagger concealed in his just 19, Ilm-ud-Din was tried and sentenced to death by hanging."After Ilm-ud-Din was convicted and sentenced to death, his trial lawyer requested Jinnah to represent him during the hearing of his appeal before the Lahore High Court. Jinnah's strategy was to attack the prosecution evidence produced before the trial court as insufficient. He also challenged the death penalty as being too harsh a punishment given the defendant's age," noted Ahmed Assad, in his 2018 book 'A Brief History of the Anti-blasphemy Laws'."But these arguments [by Jinnah] were rejected, and the sentence was affirmed. Ilm-ud-Din was executed and buried on October 31, 1929 in Mianwali. Shortly thereafter, at the request of leading members of the Muslim community, including Allama Muhammad Iqbal, the colonial authorities allowed him to be reburied in Lahore on November 14," he many Muslims, he was no murderer. Ilm-ud-Din, whose appeal was unsuccessfully argued by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was seen as a "ghazi" (warrior for the faith). His funeral procession drew thousands, and both Allama Iqbal and Jinnah attended Pakistan, he is still celebrated. A full-length film glorifying Ilm-ud-Din has even aired on state-run television, Iqbal not only attended Ilm-ud-Din's funeral but also delivered a graveside tears in his eyes, Iqbal reportedly placed Ilm-ud-Din's body in the grave and said, "This young man left us, the educated men, behind," noted columnist, public speaker, and activist Avatans Kumar, in his 2013 piece in The Times of LEADERS, THREE RESPONSES: GANDHI'S GRIEF, JINNAH'S DEFENCE, IQBAL'S PRAISEGandhi, who had earlier denounced the contents of 'Rangeela Rasool', later responded to the publisher's killing by comparing it to the Assembly bombing by Bhagat Young India (June 1924), Gandhi called the book "highly offensive" and asked, "What the motive could possibly be except to inflame passion?" He wrote that it had "no value whatsoever" for religious discourse. After the 1929 assassination of publisher Mahashe Rajpal, Gandhi compared the act to the Assembly bombing by Bhagat Singh, saying both followed the "same philosophy of mad revenge and impotent rage". He rejected violence as a means of protest or meanwhile, is remembered in Arya Samaj and broader Hindutva circles as a martyr for free response to the incident, the British swiftly passed Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code in 1927, making deliberate and malicious insult to the religious beliefs of any class of citizens a criminal offence. The blasphemy law, born out of outrage, murder, and communal protests, remains in place in India to this day -- just like communal divisions and the failure to contain extremism do.- EndsMust Watch
