Can two life sentences for two murders run consecutively? Supreme court entertains murder convict’s plea for concurrent life sentence

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to examine the validity of a decision of Punjab and Haryana High Court, which awarded two life sentences to a person convicted for murdering a man and his minor daughter and directing the life terms to run consecutively to prevent benefit of remission after he served 14 years in prison.Appearing for the murder convict, advocate Rukhmini Bobde told a partial working day bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Manmohan that the man has already served nearly 15 years in jail but is ineligible to apply for remission of life sentence which is generally available to a convict after incarceration for 14 years.She said that the Punjab and Haryana HC has ordered that if the convict gets remission for one life term after 14 years, then the second life term would commence from the date the remission is granted, which meant that he must stay in jail for at least 28 years before being eligible for remission.The bench of Mishra and Manmohan issued notice to the Haryana government limited to “ascertaining as to whether the imposition of consecutive life sentences in a double murder case is lawful. It sought a response from the state in eight weeks.The person was convicted for murdering a man, his 11-year-old daughter and attacking his minor son in 2010 with a sharp-edged weapon being fed up with the constant abuses hurled by the man.

A Sonepat sessions court had termed the murders diabolic and categorised the case as ‘rarest of rare’ to award death penalty.The HC in Apr 2015 did not agree with the trial court’s decision to view the double murder case as ‘rarest of the rare’ even to warrant imposition of extreme penalty. However, it was convinced that the murders were brutal and deserving of life sentences.Given the gravity of the offences committed by convict Rajesh, the HC had said life sentence meant imprisonment till the end of natural life and hence imposition of two life sentences would appear superfluous.However, it took into consideration the Executive’s power to remit the life sentence after a convict completes a minimum of 14 years in prison and said if the convict availed remission in one life sentence, then the other life term would commence from the date of remission without any gap of time between them.