Team Goemkarponn
PANAJI: In a major relief to rape-murder convict Mahanand Naik, the High Court of Bombay at Goa has set aside the trial court’s order denying eligibility for premature release.
Additionally, the Sentence Review Board was instructed to reevaluate his appeal for early release by the Division Bench of Justices M S Karnik and Nivedita Mehta.
Last month, Naik filed a challenge in the High Court against the Sessions Court’s decision to deny him the opportunity to set off his sentence. He noted that, as a result of his conviction in a 2009 rape case, he was not eligible for any set-off benefits.
On the basis that he was not serving the full 14 years of actual incarceration, Naik also challenged the Sentence Review Board’s decision to reject his early release.
Dolorosa Tulkar, Naik’s attorney, argued at the hearing that denying the benefit of set-off is against established legal principles in light of Section 428 of the CrPC. The Court noted that the CrPC makes it explicit that “what is to be set off is the period of detention, if any, undergone by the convict during the investigation, inquiry, or trial of the same case and before the date of such conviction.”
It went on to say that the convicted person has the right to calculate the length of his jail term starting from the day he was detained as an undertrial inmate.
Therefore, we have no qualms about overturning the trial court’s decision to deny the petitioner the benefit of set-off, given the mandate of Section 428 CrPC and the Supreme Court’s observations in Bhagirath versus Delhi Administration regarding the granting of set-off. Accordingly, the trial court’s findings that the petitioner has no right to any set-off are overturned,” the order states.
