The Delhi High Court Friday upheld a 2019 order of the Director General (Prisons) that requires convicts readmitted to jail after disposal of their appeals to be under the prison authorities’ watch for a year before being eligible for furlough.
Holding that the provision is not contrary to any provision within the Delhi Prisons Act and its Rules, Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela dismissed a challenge to the order, while emphasising that the “right to seek furlough is not an absolute right; it is rather a right governed by the statutory prescriptions”.
The division bench also reasoned that a convict once released on bail or on suspension of sentence, upon readmission to the jail, “would take some time to become accustomed to the discipline of the jail and habits inside the jail.”
The constitutional validity of the order of the prison authorities, issued by Delhi’s DG (Prisons) on March 26, 2019, was challenged in a petition by a convict, Deepak Srivastav, after he was refused furlough by the prison authorities in July this year. The authorities, while rejecting Srivastav’s plea, had pointed out that he can apply for furlough only after November 13, that is, after he completes one year from the date he was re-admitted to jail on dismissal of his appeal by the Supreme Court.
Srivastav was first convicted by a trial court in 2003 for the offence of a dowry death, committed in 2001, and was sentenced to rigorous life imprisonment. During the pendency of his appeal against the trial court order at Delhi High Court, the high court had suspended his sentence in 2006. The appeal was finally dismissed in 2017. Srivastav then went to the Supreme Court, appealing against the dismissal by the high court, which released him on bail and suspended his sentence during the pendency of the appeal before the apex court.
The Supreme Court, however, later upheld the high court’s dismissal, upholding the conviction, but reduced the sentence from rigorous life imprisonment to rigorous imprisonment for 10 years. He was thus directed to surrender to the prison authorities, with Srivastav submitting to the authorities on November 13, 2024.
The 2019 order issued by the D-G (Prisons) of the Delhi government provides that if a convict is released on regular bail or on suspension of sentence till the disposal of an appeal and is re-admitted to jail after a gap of more than one year, then the convict is not eligible for furlough immediately after admission in jail. It also provides that the Superintendent of Jail may watch the conduct of such a convict for one year from the date of re-admission in jail after the disposal of the appeal, and it is only after the lapse of one year from the date of re-admission that such a convict shall be eligible for furlough, subject to maintaining good conduct.
Story continues below this ad
Srivastav had challenged the rule on the grounds that the period of watch for one year is unreasonable, excessive, and also creates an unreasonable classification between convicts who have filed an appeal against their conviction and those who have not.
The state, on the other hand, through additional standing counsel Rahul Tyagi, submitted that the provision of one-year period is the minimum safeguard deployed by the prison authorities to ensure that convicts who had remained out of jail for a long period and have not been subjected to jail discipline are given a chance to get adjusted to it, and also to ensure that convicts who may be susceptible to repeat the offence are not released into the society.
jsi6zg