In another shocking case of a murder convict's sentence being commuted, gangster-turned-politician Anand Mohan was released prematurely from prison in the early hours of Thursday to avoid any commotion. He had been sentenced to life in prison in 2007 after being found guilty of inciting a mob to lynch a public servant.
In 1994, G Krishnaiah was the district magistrate of Gopalganj, Bihar. A similar tragic turn of events occurred in Gujarat last August, when 11 convicts sentenced to life in prison for the gangrape of Bilkis Bano and the murder of her family members during the 2002 Gujarat riots walked out to be free.
A heated debate has erupted over the legitimacy of such sentence reductions for privileged criminals who have engaged in serious crime by accident or design and have attained a special notoriety. What about the average person who has served a similar sentence and has the potential to be reformed and fit to rejoin society?
The state governments have unquestionable power, through their governors, to grant pardon, remit, commute, or suspend the punishments of any convicted person based on certain criteria. The sanctity of the law and the requirement of the law cannot be undermined by the use of estoppel rules. In exercising the constitutional power granted by Article 161, the Governor must follow the recommendation of the State Council of Ministers.
The common thread in both cases is that the perpetrators seeking early release showed no remorse for their heinous crimes. Both reprieve smack of state collusion in letting the guilty go without giving a hoot about the gravity of the crimes committed or the anguish of the victims. In both cases, the convicted individuals had previously been released on parole. Anand Mohan was already on parole, and the Chief Minister, Deputy Chief Minister, and all important functionaries of the Bihar Government recently attended the marriage of a convicted person's son.
Throwing all proprietary out the window, the Nitish Kumar government openly paved the way for Anand Mohan's release by unilaterally repealing the very clause in the state prison manual that had previously hampered his release. It recently removed from the manual the requirement that the killers of a public servant on duty be released before their time is up. Similarly, in the Bilkis case, the Gujarat Government and the Centre failed to satisfactorily answer the Supreme Court's questions about the grounds on which the criminals were granted remission. The Supreme Court also chastised the authorities for giving these convicts preferential treatment during their incarceration by granting them frequent parole.
The two cases work together to stymie the wheels of justice that the poor victims have been trying to get moving for decades. Convicts with political clout appear to be more equal than others, trampling all over morality and upending legal provisions. The Supreme Court must step in to stop this slide that is making a mockery of hard-won justice.
