DESI Vs. STATE OF HARYANA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS petition under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (hereinafter referred to as the Code) read with Articles 226/227 of the Constitution of India, relates to grant of premature release to the petitioner who was arrested in a case under sections 148/302/149 of the Indian Penal Code on 30.3.1981. He was convicted under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code and was sentenced to undergo imprisonment for life vide order of Additional Sessions Judge, Sirsa, dated 15. 1.83.

(2.) ACCORDING to the petitioner actual period of sentence undergone by him together with detention before the conviction is 10 years and 5 months. Besides he earned remissions to the extent of 5 years and 10 days. Thus the period of sentence undergone by him together with period for which he earned remissions exceeds 14 years. It was further pleaded that since the State Government did not decide his case for premature release, he filed Criminal Misc. No. 4364-M of which was decided by Harbans Singh Rai, J. on 29th April, 1991. The State was directed to decide the case of the petitioner for grant of premature release within three months failing which it was ordered that the petitioner shall be released on bail.

(3.) THE learned counsel for the parties were heard. On behalf of the petitioner, it was mainly urged that the impugned order of rejection is not a legal and valid order in as much as it does not give any reason for withholding the concession of premature release to the petitioner and that possibility of arbitrariness on the part of the State Government cannot be ruled out in treating different persons differently under same set of instructions and similar circumstances.