HET RAM Vs. STATE OF PUNJAB

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE Petitioner was sentenced on 4.3.1971 to death on the judicial side for. offence under section 302, Indian Penal Code. However, the President of India in the year 1972 on the occasion of the Independence Day Celebrations commuted the death sentence to imprisonment for life. Claiming himself to be entitled to have his case considered for premature release on the expiry of 8 -1/2 years' actual sentence an accordance with Paragraph 516 (b) of the Punjab Jail Manual, the detenu approached this Court in Cr. W. No. 125 of 1983. It was disposed of on consensus between the parties on May 9, 1983. Parties' counsel had then agreed that the case of the petitioner was covered by a decision of this Court in Mahar Singh v. The State, Cr. W. No. 215 of 1981 decided on 19 -4 -1982. Thus, in accordance therewith, the case of the petitioner was required to be examined for premature release within a period of two months from the passing of the order The said period expired with no result. The petitioner detenu has again approached this Court.

(2.) THE stance taken by the State this time is that the order of this Court in Mehar Singh's case (supra) was upset by the Supreme Court in Sadhu Singh and others v. State of Punjab, 1984 (2) Recent Criminal Reports 83 : AIR 1984 S.C. 739. In Mehar Singh's case (supra), this Court had taken the view that Govt. instructions embodied in memo. No. 403 -6JJ76/3456 dated 30 -1 -1976 (Annexure P. 3) were prospective in nature and did not govern cases of commutation of death sentences which had occur red earlier. On upsetting of the aforesaid view of this Court, the Supreme Court in Sadhu Singh's case (supra) ruled with reference to those cases of prisoners who had been sentenced to death, but whose sentence on mercy petitions had been commuted to life imprisonment, as constituting a distinct class, to be governed by the 1976 instructions. The words of the Court are "clearly existing cases of life convicts failing within that category will be governed by those instructions". Mehar Singh's case (supra) being over -ruled the consensual order passed by this Court earlier in Criminal Writ No. 125 of 1983 became incapable of being implemented, for there cannot be any estoppel against law and what the Supreme Court rules is the law of the land. In the same breath when the Supreme Court has ruled that the 1976 instructions would apply to cases of the category in which the case of the petitioner falls, it is idle to cry on the score that the date of commutation is a determining factor. The learned counsel for the petitioner on the strength of paragraphs 3 -4 of the 1976 instructions vehemently urged that when death sentence of the petitioner -detenu had been commuted in 1972, whereafter section 433 -A of the Code of Criminal Procedure was introduced in the year 1978, the interpretation cannot be so put to the instructions so as to set at the rule laid down by the Supreme Court in Maru Ram and others v. Union of India and others, AIR 1980 S.C. 2147, to have the 1976 instructions applied retrospectively. There can neither he any quarrel with the rule laid down by the Supreme Court in Maru Rani's case (supra) nor with the law laid down in Sadhu Singh's case, (supra). The latter is a case which has clearly spelled out cases of prisoners, whose death sentence was commuted to that of life as a distinct class. Their cases could not be equated. with that of ordinary lifers. The rule laid down in Maru Ram's case (supra) is proved by the exception created in Sadhu Singh's case (supra). This is my considered view and I hold it accordingly.

(3.) FOR the foregoing reasons, there is no merit in this petition which fails and is hereby dismissed.