LI Network
Published on: November 06, 2023 at 13:26 IST
The Supreme Court has recently emphasized that there is no fixed rule mandating a convict to serve a specific minimum sentence before their request to suspend the prison term can be considered by a court.
This observation came as the top court disagreed with a decision by the Gujarat High Court not to include the pre-conviction jail time of two applicants in calculating their sentence.
In a case involving Vishnubhai Gangpatbhai Patel and another v. State of Gujarat, a bench comprising Justices Abhay S Oka and Pankaj Mithal made this statement on November 3 while reviewing a challenge to the Gujarat High Court’s ruling.
The Gujarat High Court had considered only the time the two convicts spent in jail after their conviction as the period of their sentence, without including the time they had served before their conviction. The Supreme Court disagreed with this approach and deemed it incorrect.
The top court remarked, “Before the High Court, surprisingly, a submission was made on behalf of the State that sentence undergone only post-conviction should be considered… The High Court has accepted the said submission… Apart from the fact that the said approach is incorrect, we may note here that there is no strict rule requiring an accused to serve a sentence for a specific period before their plea for the suspension of the sentence is considered.”
The Supreme Court was hearing the pleas of two individuals convicted of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. Their requests to suspend their sentences while their criminal appeals were pending had been denied by the Gujarat High Court in June, prompting them to seek relief from the Supreme Court.
Previously, the High Court had agreed with the State’s argument that the actual sentence served by the convicts was not more than five months, which was the time they spent in jail after their conviction.
The Supreme Court expressed the view that the High Court should have favorably considered the applications of the convicts, as they had no prior criminal records and had served more than 40 percent of the maximum sentence for their offense.
As a result, the appeal was allowed, and the accused were ordered to appear before the trial court within a week to be released on bail.