'Downright Bizarre' : Supreme Court On High Court Judgment Resulting In Different Jail Terms For Convicts In Same Offence

The Supreme Court on Monday expressed surprise at a High Court judgment which awarded different sentence for the convicts for the same offence.

A bench comprising Justice S. Ravindra Bhat and Justice Dipankar Datta was dealing with a criminal appeals challenging the judgment of the Punjab and Haryana High Court sentencing 8 persons for the offences of culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Section 304 II of the Indian Penal Code and unlawful assembly under Section 149 IPC.

The convicts were accused of forming an unlawful assembly and killing a person using deadly weapons.

The trial court had convicted all the accused persons as charged and sentenced them to rigorous imprisonment for life. However, in appeal the High Court through the impugned judgment partly allowed the appeals and converted the convictions under Section 302 read with 149 IPC to Section 304 Part II read with Section 149 IPC. The High Court modified the sentence imposed by the trial court to the period of sentence undergone by the accused persons, as the appropriate sentence.

Although the roles attributed to the convicts were "practically indistinguishable", the jail terms underwent by the convicts, as a consequence of the High Court's order, differed. For example, one convict underwent over 9 years sentence; another suffered 3 years; many others underwent over 1 year imprisonment; one person suffered only 11 months imprisonment.

This wide disparity in the jail terms astonished the Supreme Court.

"The sentencing in this case, to put it mildly, is inexplicable (if not downright bizarre). On the one hand, Krishan underwent sentence for 9 years 4 months- at the other end of the spectrum, Sunder s/o Rajpal underwent only 11 months. No rationale appears from the reasoning of the High Court for this wide disparity. It is not as though the court took note of the role ascribed to the accused (such a course was not possible, given the nature of the evidence)", the Supreme Court Court observed.

"If it were assumed that the age of the accused played a role, then Krishan, at 61 years- who served 9 years and Brahmajit, who had served in the army, and was detained for over 8 years got the stiffest sentence. On the other end of the scale, younger persons were left relatively unscathed, having served between 3 years and 11 months,” the Court noted.

The Apex Court noted that all the accused were found concurrently guilty under Section 148 IPC; they were armed with different kinds of implements and weapons, that were capable of inflicting deadly injuries.

It modified the imposition of ‘sentence undergone’ awarded by Punjab & Haryana High Court to the 8 convicts for the offences under Section 304 II and Section 149 IPC, to the rigorous imprisonment of 5 years on the ground that the High Court fell into error in not considering the gravity of the offence.

The division bench comprising Justice S. Ravindra Bhat and Justice Dipankar Datta observed:

“The impugned judgment, in this court’s opinion, fell into error in not considering the gravity of the offence. Having held all the accused criminally liable, under Section 304 Part II read with Section 149 IPC and also not having found any distinguishing feature in the form of separate roles played by each of them, the imposition of the “sentence undergone” criteria, amounted to an aberration, and the sentencing is for that reason, flawed. This court is, therefore, of the view that given the totality of circumstances (which includes the fact that the accused have been at large for the past four years), the appropriate sentence would be five years rigorous imprisonment.”

The Court reminded that the principle of proportionality should guide the sentencing process. Various precedents, which hold that the Court has the duty to impose the "appropriate sentence" which is proportionate to the crime, were cited in the judgment.

"Reformatory, deterrent and punitive aspects of punishment thus play their due part in judicial thinking while determining the question of awarding appropriate sentences", the judgment stated.

Thus, the Court modified the sentence imposed on all the convicts to five years of rigorous imprisonment.

“However, at the same time, the court is cognizant of the fact Krishan and Bramhajit served more than that period. Therefore, the impugned judgment, as far as they are concerned, is left undisturbed. Consequently, the sentence of Raju, Parveen, Sunder s/o Amit Lal, Sandeep, Nar Singh, and Sunder s/o Rajpal is hereby modified; they are hereby sentenced to undergo Rigorous Imprisonment for five years. They shall surrender and serve the rest of their sentences within six weeks from today,” the Court said.

Case Title: Uggarsain v. The State of Haryana & Ors.

Coram: Justice S. Ravindra Bhat and Justice Dipankar Datta

Citation : 2023 LiveLaw (SC) 492

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