Citing the Supreme Court’s order that life sentence is for the entire life of a person, the Central government, which told the Madras High Court that it was the appropriate authority to decide on the release of the convicts in former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination case, said that they cannot be released merely because they have completed a certain number of years in jail.
The Centre made the submission on a plea filed by B. Robert Payas and S. Jayakumar — both life convicts in the case — seeking release from prison. In the counter affidavit filed on Friday before the bench of Justices A. Selvam and P. Kalaiarasan, Manas Mondal, Under Secretary in the Judicial Division of the Ministry of Home Affairs, said that in cases charged under Central Acts, investigated by a central agency, namely the CBI, the Centre alone was the appropriate authority to decide on release of convicts.
In 2012, the convicts had filed habeas corpus petitions, seeking to know if their names were in a list of 180 life convicts set for premature release on the eve of Republic Day that year. The petitions quoted the Tamil Nadu Prison Rules to argue that they were eligible for release as they had been imprisoned for over 20 years.
