Lifelong life imprisonment

Recently a debate has been triggered regarding the provision of life imprisonment with a statement made by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha that life sentence literally means imprisonment until one's natural death. This raised a question whether imprisonment for life denotes imprisonment till natural death or any defined period of time.

According to Section 53 of the Penal Code (PC) 1860 the punishments include capital punishment; imprisonment for life, which will be rigorous imprisonment; simple or hard labour imprisonment, forfeiture of property and monetary fine. However, the perplexity mainly arises from the provisions of the PC, the Jail Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) 1898.

Section 55 of the PC suggests that the Government may commute the sentence of imprisonment for life by giving any specified period not exceeding twenty years. In addition to that, Section 57 of the Code further implies that life sentence shall be counted as 30 years of rigorous jail in calculating fractions of terms of imprisonment.

Moreover, according to Section 511 of the PC, “whoever attempts to commit an offence punishable by this Code with imprisonment for life or imprisonment, or to cause such an offence to be committed, and in such attempt does any act towards the commission of the offence, shall, where no express provision is made by this Code for the punishment of such attempt, be punished with imprisonment of any description provided for the offence, for a term which may extend to one-half of the longest term of imprisonment provided for that offence, or with such fine as is provided for the offence, or with both.”  It means that the time limit of imprisonment for attempt to commit any offence lies at the discretion of the court, to apply or calculate the fractions of terms of imprisonment.

Furthermore, Section 124A of the PC refers the punishment for 'sedition' is imprisonment for life or any shorter term, to which fine may be added, or with imprisonment which may extend to three years, to which fine may be added, or with fine. Now if we think about a person found guilty of an offence of 'attempt to commit sedition' then there is no clear provision of law that which punishment can be imposed. In this situation, Section 511 will apply and punishments have to be imposed by 'calculating the fractions of terms of punishment' as stated in Section 57. Hence in accordance with the above stated sections, it has to be assumed that imprisonment for life shall be reckoned as equivalent to rigorous imprisonment for thirty years and after 'calculating the fractions of terms of punishment', i.e. 30 years, the highest punishment for the attempt to commit sedition will be 15 years.

Moreover, Section 65 of the same Code entails that if any offence is punishable with imprisonment as well as fine and if the Court directs the offender to be imprisoned in default of payment of the fine then the term of imprisonment shall not exceed one-fourth of the term of maximum custody fixed for the offence. Here section 57 again will come to resolve the period of punishment for life sentence.

Nevertheless, the President has prerogative power to pardon anyone under Article 49 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of Bangladesh and under Section 402A of the CrPC. Additionally, the Government also has discretionary power to suspend, remit or alter sentence with or without condition as per Sections 54 and 55 of the PC and Sections 401 and 402 of the CrPC.

In the Gopal Vinayak Godse v The State of Maharashtra and Others, AIR (1961) SC 600 and in many other cases, the Indian Supreme Court observed that “…..unless the sentence is commuted or remitted by appropriate authority under the relevant provisions of the Indian Penal Code or the CrPC, a prisoner sentenced to life imprisonment is bound in law to serve the life term in prison.” Moreover, our apex court in the Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh v Abdul Quader Molla promulgated that “A sentence of imprisonment for life must be treated as one of imprisonment for the whole of the remaining period of the convicted person's natural life…”

Section 57 does not say that imprisonment for life shall be deemed to be imprisonment for thirty years for all purposes nor does it enable to draw any such inference. So, prison authorities are bound to keep the accused persons who are sentenced to imprisonment for life in jail treating such sentence for the whole of the remaining of the convicted person's natural life unless he has earned recursions for good conduct.

Defining the precedents and substantive laws, it can be said that the Honorable Chief Justice is very much ingenuous in his position in computing tenure of life sentence albeit there is confusion about duration of imprisonment for life among legal fraternity.

THE WRITER IS AN ADVOCATE AT THE SUPREME COURT OF BANGLADESH.