Rajasthan HC Refuses To Send Woman Back To Jail Despite Earlier Sentence Reduction Being Based On Erroneous Assumption Of Period Served

Rajasthan High Court denied sending a woman back to jail whose punishment for the offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder was reduced by the division court 15 years ago based on an erroneous assumption that she was had already undergone a period of almost 8 years in jail, when in actuality she had been in prison for only around 2 years.The division bench of Justice Farjand Ali and Justice Anand Sharma took into account the totality of the circumstances, and looking at these as mitigating factors, it was opined that such circumstances necessitated modulation of the sentence within the legally permissible range to ensure that justice was tempered with compassion, proportionality and humane considerations. “At a human level, this Court cannot remain unmindful of the stark reality that directing this impoverished woman to undergo the remaining six years of the sentence, after twenty long years of struggle and having already borne the irreversible personal consequences of the incident, would be an unduly harsh course.”The Court further opined that the administrative miscommunication was a result of a systemic lapse involving the Registry of the Court, the Trial Court, the government authorities and the Public Prosecutor, and was not attributable to the convict. Hence, its burden could not be put on an impoverished tribal woman. The petition was filed based on a communication by the trial court informing about an anomaly in a final judgment rendered by the coordinate bench of the Court in 2011. The woman was convicted for the offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder of her husband. The division bench wrongly assumed that between 2003 and 2011, the convict was imprisoned for the entire period for the reason of failure to furnish bail bonds. Hence, her punishment was reduced to the period already undergone by her, and she was released. Later on, the actual position emerged that she was able to furnish the bail bonds in 2005 itself, and was out of prison since then. Hence, the present petition was filed to address and rectify the anomaly in decision of the court. After hearing the contentions, the Court highlighted certain facts, like that woman belonged to an indigent household in a remote trial village, and was part of a socio-economically marginalized stratum. She had no criminal antecedents, neither any subsequent complaints since her release. The homicide was committed against the husband, when he came back home late, along with chicken and liquour, and started drinking in the courtyard. Eventually, the dinner was served with a delay that led to altercation between the couple, and in a fit of rage, the convict gave a solitary blow with an axe on her husband leading to his death. The Court stated that it could not turn a blind eye to the context in which this incident had unfold, that depicted the insensitive behavioural pattern of the husband. It was observed that preparing a meal in a rural household was not as instant as preparing noodles, but required patience. It was further observed that it was totally understandable that delay in serving food, uninformed late arrival, and intoxicated state of the husband led to irritation and verbal exchange amongst them, finally culminating to the unfortunate altercation. These elements, rooted in the lived reality of the parties could not be trivialized, as they indicated emotional turbulence and fatigue. “In light of the cumulative circumstances the domestic and intensely personal nature of the incident, the fact that the deceased was none other than the appellant's own husband, whose death, though caused in a moment of grave provocation, has undeniably inflicted upon her a deep and irreversible personal loss; for what punishment could be greater than the sting of widowhood and the desolation of a life condemned to solitude, the appellant's impoverished background, the absence of any criminal antecedents, the efflux of nearly two decades, and her having already undergone approximately two years of custodial imprisonment, this Court is of the considered view that the sentence already undergone would amply suffice to meet the ends of justice.”While underscoring the importance of reformative school of criminal justice system, the Court stated that harsh and savage punishments belonged to antiquated eras. Contemporary criminal jurisprudence needed a mechanism to reshape a person who had momentarily deviated into criminality. “A therapeutic, rather than an in terrorem, outlook ought to guide sentencing courts, for indiscriminate or brutal incarceration frequently scars the mind instead of reforming it…The reformative approach is, therefore, not an act of benevolence but a constitutional and jurisprudential mandate.”In this background, it was held that even though the earlier presumption of 8 years of incarceration of the convict was erroneous, the actual period of imprisonment i.e. around 2 years, when viewed in conjunction with the efflux of 20...

Rajasthan HC Refuses To Send Woman Back To Jail Despite Earlier Sentence Reduction Being Based On Erroneous Assumption Of Period Served

Nupur Agrawal

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