Supreme Court restrains states on giving remission to life convicts

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court today restrained all states from exercising power of remission for releasing convicts from jail who are serving life sentence and sought their response whether the Centre's nod was needed for the purpose in cases prosecuted by central agencies like CBI.

A five-judge Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice R M Lodha issued notices to all state government asking them to file their response by July 18 so that the matter can be taken up for hearing on July 22.

"Meanwhile, state governments are restrained from exercising power of remission for releasing life convicts till the next date of hearing," the bench, also comprising justices J S Khehar, J Chelameswar, A K Sikri and Rohinton Nariman said in an interim order.

The bench made it clear that there was need for a categorical response "whether in CBI cases, states have any role on the question of remission to life convicts".

The issue of remission was referred to the Constitution Bench after the Centre had challenged the Tamil Nadu government's decision to remit the sentences of all seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.

The court had on February 20 stayed the state government's decision to release three convicts-Murugan, Santhan and Arivu- whose death sentence was commuted to life term by it on February 18 in the case.

It had later on also stayed release of four other convicts Nalini, Robert Pious, Jayakumar and Ravichandran in the case, saying there were procedural lapses on the part of the state government.

When the matter came for hearing along with other similarly situated convicts including the Red Fort attack case, Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar submitted that Tamil Nadu Government has no power to exercise jurisdiction in the cases investigated and prosecuted by the central probe agencies like CBI.

"Today Tamil Nadu has exercised power (of remission). Tomorrow other states would also," he submitted while reading out the April 25 order of the apex court when the matter was referred to the Constitution Bench by framing the issues that need to be deliberated.