Prisoner Cannot Be Reduced To A Ping-Pong Ball: Delhi High Court Orders Forthwith Release of Life Convict After Fifth Mechanical Rejection Of Premature Release

Quoting a verse from the Rig Veda on being cleansed of past errors and quoting Oscar Wilde's observation that "no saint is without a past, no sinner is without a future", the Court set aside the fifth rejection of a life convict's plea for premature release and directed his forthwith release, after finding that a Delhi Police DCP had recommended against his release in a covering note that flatly contradicted the underlying police verification report, which had in fact found no reason to oppose his release.

A Single Judge Bench of Justice Girish Kathpalia, challenging the Sentence Review Board's order dated October 16, 2025 rejecting the premature release of the petitioner, convicted of double murder and theft in 2010, observed, “Of course, the issue of premature release falls in the domain of the executive, and the judicial organ of the State has power of judicial review. The issue is where the executive organ of the State opts to turn blind eye to the abovementioned plethora of judicial verdicts including Asif Alias Naeem (supra), laying down specific guidelines, should a constitutional court be so helpless that it finds no option but to throw the ball back into the court of the executive, reducing the aggrieved prisoner to a ping-pong ball. In my view, sending the petitioner back to the door of SRB would not be conscionable”.

“…If now again the matter is remanded and the SRB opts to repeat its stereotyped response, the petitioner will again have to approach this court and looking at overflowing dockets of this court dealing with almost 100 cases every day, one cannot predict when he will get chance to be heard. In the meanwhile, the constant suffering of incarceration will lead to frustration and possibly reversal of his reformation”, the Bench further noted.

Advocate Vrinda Bhandari appeared for the petitioner and Amol Sinha, ASC appeared for the respondent.

The petitioner had been convicted under Sections 302, 380, 34 IPC and sentenced to life imprisonment, a sentence upheld by the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court, and had, by the time of this order, undergone over 20 years of actual imprisonment (more than 25 years with remission).

His case for premature release had been rejected by the SRB on four earlier occasions, the fourth of which was set aside by a coordinate bench in July 2025 and remanded for fresh consideration in line with the guidelines laid down in Asif Alias Naeem v. State of NCT of Delhi& Anr., W.P. (Crl.) No. 1/2025. On reconsideration, the SRB rejected his case a fifth time in October 2025, citing his 2018 jail punishment for possessing two grams of tobacco, the manner of his arrest from the Indo-Nepal border, and the gravity of the original offence.

The petitioner's counsel argued that each SRB rejection was virtually a copy-paste of the last, reflecting complete non-application of mind, and pointed to a Probation Officer's Social Investigation Report and a police verification report, both of which supported release, as well as the petitioner's clean disciplinary record apart from the 2018 tobacco incident, his repeated and unblemished use of parole and furlough, his educational and vocational achievements in jail, and his daughter's serious congenital medical condition.

The State defended the SRB's decision, contending that premature release is an executive function into which courts should not intrude beyond directing reconsideration.

“Extracted from the Rig Ved, the largest and oldest of the four sacred texts of Hinduism, this verse is a prayer to the Lord Varun (upholder of cosmic law) that we be not destroyed by our past errors committed due to ignorance or thoughtlessness and we be cleansed and set free. We are defined by not our worst mistakes, but by our next choices, as there is a history to every halo and a potential to every shadow. To quote Oscar Wilde: ‘No saint is without a past, no sinner is without a future’. Every darkness carries in it a hope for light and every light holds a memory of darkness…”, the Bench said.

“…The track connecting this duality of darkness and light is the course track of reformative sentencing. Of course, every wrong deserves a consequence; but every consequence must have a limit lest it became wrong in itself. Kautilya’s Arthashastra made references to the elements of reformative policy of sentencing that later came to be known as ‘remission’. Release of convicted prisoners on sympathetic grounds prior to completion of the term of imprisonment imposed on them has always been a significant part of the ancient Hindu Dandashastra (quite similar to the present day concepts of penology) and jurisprudence. There always existed a conscious and consistent thought amongst the ancient thinkers of our country aimed at reformation of criminals in order to achieve larger goal of peace in society by minimisation of crime and criminogenic tendencies. The thinkers across other parts of globe subsequently drew influence from those ancient thoughts of ours and acknowledged that reformatory policies are more productive than deterrent and/or retributory approach to crime and criminal. The present decision is rooted in this philosophy”, it further noted.

The Court found that the DCP's covering communication recommending against release directly contradicted the SHO's verification report forwarded with it, and that after being called upon to explain, the DCP had compounded the error by introducing fresh adverse material not found in the original report, a "total non-application of mind" that infected the SRB's own decision.

Accordingly, the Court quashed the SRB's rejection and directed the petitioner's forthwith release, while directing that copies of the judgment be sent to the Chairperson of the Sentence Review Board and the Director General of Prisons, Delhi, with the expectation that the systemic concerns regarding the Board's composition and functioning flagged in the judgment receive serious institutional attention.

Cause Title: Moti alias Mohit v. State of NCT of Delhi & Anr. (Neutral Citation: 2026:DHC:7268)

Appearances:

Petitioner: Vrinda Bhandari, Vanshita Gupta, Advocates.

Respondent: Amol Sinha, ASC, Kshitiz Garg, Advocates.

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