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The Supreme Court is seized of the issue of granting ordinary or emergency leave to convicts whose appeals against conviction are pending before appellate courts, amicus curiae Abudu Kumar Rajaratnam told a Larger Bench comprising five judges of the Madras High Court on Friday (June 19, 2026).
He made the submission before the Larger Bench consisting of Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justices C.V. Karthikeyan, A.D. Jagadish Chandira, M. Nirmal Kumar, and Sunder Mohan who had taken up a reference made to them by a Division Bench of Justices N. Sathish Kumar and M. Jothiraman.
The reference was made on November 11, 2025, after the Division Bench found there was a conflict between the decisions rendered by two Full Benches (comprising three judges of the High Court) on the issue in State of Tamil Nadu vs Yesu (2011) and T. Ramalakshmi vs State of Tamil Nadu (2025).
Therefore, the Division Bench had directed d the Registry to place the matter before the Chief Justice with a request to constitute a Larger Bench to answer whether leave could be granted to a prisoner whose appeal against conviction was pending before either the Supreme Court or the High Court.
The Division Bench had also directed the Registry not to entertain any petition for grant of emergency leave or ordinary leave under the Tamil Nadu Suspension of Sentence Rules, 1982, with respect to convicts whose appeals against conviction were pending at appellate courts, until the Larger Bench answered the reference.
After taking up the reference for hearing on June 10, 2026, the Larger Bench appointed senior counsel Mr. Rajaratnam as an amicus curiae to assist the court. The amicus did an extensive research on the subject before informing the Larger Bench that the Supreme Court was already seized of the same issue.
He said the top court had on April 2, 2024 taken note that some States do not extend the benefit of leave/parole/furlough to prisoners whose appeals against conviction were pending before appellate courts and insist that those prisoners could obtain appropriate orders from the appellate courts.
Therefore, to lay down a law on the subject, the Supreme Court had suo motu impleaded the States of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Telangana, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, and Madhya Pradesh and directed the Directors-General of Prisons in these States to disclose the procedures followed by them.
Accordingly, only Haryana, Jharkhand, Punjab, Bihar, and Telangana filed their responses on April 16, 2024, and hence the Supreme Court granted two more weeks to the other States to respond. Unfortunately, the case was not listed before the top court after that and the matter remains pending adjudication, the amicus said.
Stating that he would take steps to get the matter listed before the summer vacation Bench of the Supreme Court or immediately after the end of the vacation, Mr. Rajaratnam said that until the top court decided the issue, the convicts in Tamil Nadu could be granted leave irrespective of their pending appeals against conviction.
After hearing him, State Public Prosecutor R. John Sathyan, and a host of other lawyers, the Larger Bench decided to pass detailed orders in a day or two.
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