SC upholds life term for serial killer Chandrakant Jha

The Supreme Court has refused to interfere with the sentence of serial killer Chandrakant Jha, who had terrorised Delhi by dumping the decapitated and mutilated bodies of three victims outside Tihar Jail between 2006 and 2007 before taunting the police to catch him. The court dismissed Jha’s plea challenging his sentence of imprisonment for the remainder of his natural life without remission, holding that there was no legal infirmity in the Delhi High Court’s 2016 decision commuting his death sentence while ensuring he would never be released prematurely.Jha, a native of Bihar’s Madhepura district, became one of Delhi’s most infamous serial killers after murdering three men – Anil Mandal, Upender and Dilip – in 2006 and 2007. (HT Archive)A bench of justices Sanjay Karol and Augustine George Masih rejected Jha’s contention that a sentence of imprisonment till the end of natural life without remission was unconstitutional. It said that the issue stood conclusively settled by the Constitution Bench ruling in Union of India vs V Sriharan (2016). The court said the Delhi High Court had categorically directed that Jha would remain in prison for the rest of his life without remission and that the constitutional powers of pardon and clemency with the President and Governor remained unaffected.“Nothing further needs to be said,” the bench observed on Wednesday while dismissing Jha’s writ petition.Jha, a native of Bihar’s Madhepura district, became one of Delhi’s most infamous serial killers after murdering three men – Anil Mandal, Upender and Dilip – in 2006 and 2007. In each case, he decapitated the victim, dumped the mutilated body near Tihar Jail and mocked investigators by sending letters and making phone calls challenging them to apprehend him.A Delhi trial court had sentenced Jha to death in two of the three cases and awarded life imprisonment till death in the third. In January 2016, however, the Delhi High Court commuted the death sentences, citing the absence of eyewitnesses, while affirming his conviction in all three murders. It simultaneously directed that he remain in prison for the rest of his life without remission. The Supreme Court declined to interfere with that verdict in 2019.Wednesday’s judgment came in a batch of four petitions filed by convicts serving similar “special category” life sentences after their death penalties had either been commuted by courts or through constitutional clemency.The bench also dismissed the plea of Ramasrey alias Fakkad, convicted in Uttar Pradesh for kidnapping for ransom, murder and destruction of evidence. His death sentence had been commuted by the Allahabad High Court to imprisonment for the remainder of his natural life.Another petitioner, Atbir Singh, was convicted for the 1996 triple murder of three members of a Delhi family in Mukherjee Nagar. Although his death sentence had been upheld by the Supreme Court, it was commuted by the President in 2012 to imprisonment for the rest of his natural life without parole or remission.Similarly, the court rejected petitions filed by Sarabjit Singh, Gurdev Singh alias Baldev Singh and Satnam Singh, who were convicted in a 1991 multiple murder case in Punjab. Their death sentences, upheld by the Punjab and Haryana High Court and later by the Supreme Court, had also been commuted by the President to imprisonment for the remainder of their natural lives without remission.Rejecting the common challenge, the Supreme Court said imprisonment for life, in law, means imprisonment for the rest of a convict’s natural life unless validly remitted. It noted that the Constitution Bench in Sriharan had expressly upheld the power of constitutional courts to carve out a special category of life imprisonment beyond the scope of statutory remission in exceptional cases where ordinary life imprisonment would be grossly inadequate but the death penalty was considered excessive.The bench further held that the petitions were “misdirected” as none of the recognised grounds for judicial review of the President’s or Governor’s exercise of clemency powers had been made out. In Jha’s case, it also noted that he had not even approached the constitutional authorities or the state government seeking remission before invoking Article 32.