Declares that it firmly believes that the parole time should not be taken into account for determining real incarceration and that it fully supports the HC’s position.
PANJIM: The dramatic Mandar Surlakar murder case caused four suspects to submit a special leave petition (SLP) with the Supreme Court, asking for their release from prison with a period of parole and furlough while taking into account the 14-year sentence they were actually serving. The SLP was denied.
The ruling of the High Court of Bombay at Goa, which had denied their writ petitions in August of last year, was appealed by the four defendants, Rohan Pai Dhungat, Nafiaz Shaikh, Shankar Tiwari, and Jovito Ryan Pinto. The petitioners’ senior attorneys, Adv. Siddharth Dave and Adv. Shivraj Gaonkar, vehemently argued that the High Court had seriously erred in concluding that the period of parole is to be excluded from the period of sentence under the Rules, 2006 while taking 14 years of actual imprisonment into account for the purpose of premature release.
The accused or convicted might be considered to be in custody or judicial custody even when on parole, therefore the duration of parole must be taken into account when calculating the 14 years of real incarceration for the purpose of premature release.
The High Court had ruled that, while determining the 14 years of actual incarceration for the purpose of premature release, the time of parole is to be deducted from the length of punishment. The defendants had requested to be let out of custody.
The Supreme Court Bench, made up of Justice M. B. Shah and Justice C. T. Ravikumar, opined that if the period of parole is taken into account when calculating the 14 years of actual imprisonment, then any influential prisoner could be granted parole multiple times because there are no restrictions on how many times it can be granted. If the prisoners’ submission is accepted, it could undermine the very goal and purpose of actual imprisonment.
“We firmly believe that the parole time must be disregarded when evaluating real incarceration. We wholeheartedly concur with the High Court’s ruling on this point of view. The Apex Court ruled that all of these Special Leave Petitions deserved to be rejected and were so dismissed in light of the aforementioned and for the aforementioned reasons.
Adv. Shivraj Gaonkar claims that the Supreme Court dismissed SLPs that involved legal issues without even notifying the respondents, including the State government, the Home Department, the Goa Children’s Court, and the late Mandar’s father Deepak Surlakar.
The four defendants had served 11 to 12 of their 14 years of “actual incarceration” as of the day in question. The majority of the petitioners who were serving life sentences had been on parole for just over two years and had been on furlough for around two months. Additionally, the majority of them had had remission for 18 to 20 months. The High Court declined to release the convicts early and did not credit these times when calculating the real amount of incarceration the prisoners had to endure.
