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Rajan’s 30 years of prison sentence has found mercy in the Supreme Court’s eyes. On April 25, the Court, in the case of Rajan v The Home Secretary & Ors, has directed the concerned authority to process the representation related to Rajan to its logical end expeditiously and preferably within four months.

Court said that the prisoner has undergone actual sentence for a sufficiently   long   period   of   time for multiple offences which were to run concurrently.

First representation for premature release was rejected by the State Government in 2010 on reasons recorded by the Advisory Board. Then, after a   gap   of around 8 years, Rajan once again made another representation on February 5, 2018 to the Home Secretary. The representation did not evoke any response, to which the prisoner Rajan filed the present writ  petition.

The apex court has relied upon judgment in the Ram Sewak  Vs The   State   of   Uttar   Pradesh, where premature release was awarded to a prisoner on serving 29 years of sentence. Rajan contended that he has already undergone 30 years of actual imprisonment and with remission, the total sentence undergone by him would be more than 36 years, which is even more than Ram Sewak in the 2018 judgment. Further, the Supreme Court, in State of Punjab v Dalbir Singh of 2012, has already struck down Section 27(3) of the Indian Arms Act as unconstitutional, and as a consequence thereof, the conviction and sentence awarded to the petitioner for the said offence cannot be reckoned any more.

—India Legal Bureau