Poverty prevents people from filing appeals, says Madras High Court; orders release of life convict citing parity

The Hindu

4 days ago

Observing that there are several reasons, including poverty, that prevent people from filing appeals before higher judicial forums, the Madras High Court has ordered the release of a convict in a dacoity-cum-murder case by according him the benefit of parity with his co-convicts, who had been released from prison by an order of the Supreme Court in 2018.
A Division Bench of Justices M.S. Ramesh and V. Lakshminarayanan concurred with the argument of advocate R. Sankarasubbu that if the convict Balu, alias D. Balasubramanian, had approached the top court along with the three co-convicts, there was every possibility of his sentence also having been reduced from life imprisonment to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment.
The judges allowed a writ petition filed by the convict's wife Indira Gandhi, seeking the release of her husband on the ground of parity. They recorded the submission of Additional Public Prosecutor E. Raj Thilak, who also did not dispute the proposition of law laid down by the Supreme Court, in at least three cases, regarding the principle of extending parity to an unappealed convict.
'When the petitioner complains that her husband's constitutional right under Article 21 (right to life and personal liberty) had been violated, we cannot shrug off our duties and ask the petitioner to... prefer an appeal to the Supreme Court,' the judges wrote and pointed out that the criminal case was from the year 2002, and that more than two decades had passed since he was convicted.
'All that we are doing is performing our constitutional duty of rendering parity between A1, A2, A4 and the petitioner's husband. Our powers under Article 226 of the Constitution are wide and they have been granted only to enable us to do justice. This court also has the inherent power and the jurisdiction, while dealing with situations as presented in the present case, to render justice and prevent manifest injustice,' the judges said.
According to the prosecution, the convicts had robbed 4.7 kg of gold and 5.5 kg of silver from a jewellery shop after killing a person who was sleeping inside the shop. Though the petitioner's husband had not committed any overt act with respect to the murder, he too was convicted under Section 391 of the Indian Penal Code, which makes all members of a gang liable for punishment even if one of them had committed murder.
Though the trial court had imposed only 10 years of imprisonment on the convicts, the High Court had enhanced their punishment to life imprisonment in 2010 while allowing a 2006 State appeal for enhancement of sentence. However, allowing a further appeal by three of the convicts, except the petitioner's husband, the Supreme Court had reduced their sentence to 10 years in 2018 and ordered their release.
Hence, the petitioner had now approached the High Court, by way of a writ petition, seeking parity and obtained the relief.