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Rohan Dhungat Etc. vs The State of Goa & Ors. Etc.

Special Leave Petition (Crl.) · 2023 INSC 16Decided 5 Jan 2023
Special Leave Petition (Crl.) Nos. 12574-12577 of 2022
M.R. Shah · C.T. Ravikumar

Background

Rohan Dhungat and three other convicts serving life sentences in Goa had each been released on parole several times under the Goa Prisons Rules, 2006. They applied for premature release, and although the State Sentence Review Board recommended it, the trial court that convicted them advised against release given the gravity of their crimes, so the State refused. They went to the Bombay High Court at Goa arguing that, counting their parole periods, they had completed the 14 years of custody required for premature release. The High Court held that under Rule 335 of the 2006 Rules parole and furlough periods count as "remission of sentence" and so must be excluded when computing 14 years of actual imprisonment; without those periods the convicts fell short, and their petitions were dismissed.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court dismissed the special leave petitions and upheld the High Court. It explained that parole is a conditional, temporary release granted by the State Government for a specific reason, and the Goa Rules themselves say the term of imprisonment does not include the period of parole, while Rule 335 treats parole as remission; it follows that parole time cannot simultaneously be counted as time actually served. The convicts' reliance on Sunil Fulchand Shah (a preventive-detention case under COFEPOSA) and Avtar Singh was found misplaced, and Section 55 of the Prisons Act, 1894, which deems a prisoner being escorted to or from prison to still be "in prison", has no application to release on parole. The Court added a practical concern: if parole counted as imprisonment, an influential prisoner could obtain parole repeatedly, since there is no cap on the number of times it can be granted, and thereby defeat the very purpose of requiring actual imprisonment.

Lesson Learnt

For a life convict seeking premature release, only time actually spent behind bars counts towards the qualifying period: days out on parole do not, because parole is a concession outside prison, not imprisonment. Prison rules must be read so that their purpose (genuine time served) cannot be gamed.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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