Secy reminds Jain about delayed meet that will decide fate of 100 prisoners
RELIEF SOON? Jessica Lall’s killer Manu Sharma, tandoor murder convict Sushil Sharma among those due for release
NEW DELHI: Delhi home secretary Manoj Parida has written to the state home minister Satyendar Jain asking him to hold the long pending sentence review board (SRB) meeting that will decide the fate of over 100 prisoners who have completed their jail terms and are awaiting an early release.
A senior government officer said home secretary Parida wrote to Jain on May 11 reminding him that the board meeting, which was to be held two months ago, is yet to take place. Jain is yet to reply to the letter, an officer confirmed. The minister is the chairman of the sentence review board (SRB) while the director general (prisons) is a member secretary.
HT contacted Jain, who refused to comment on the senior bureaucrat’s letter to him but said, “no decision on the date of the meeting has been taken yet.”
The sentence review board was scheduled to meet on April 24. But a day before the meeting, Jain’s office informed that the meeting had been indefinitely postponed.
The last SRB meeting was held on December 14 last year. According to a 2004 government notification related to the setting up of the sentence review board, the then L-G had directed the government to hold the meeting at least once every three months.
On May 9, the Delhi High Court, while responding to a public interest litigation, had sought the status report from Delhi government as well as the prison’s director general about the next sentence review board meeting. The PIL was filed on the basis of a Hindustan Times report dated April 30 that many elderly prison- ers were languishing in jail, waiting for the parole board to decide their cases.
According to the HT report, 100 prisoners are waiting for an early release, of whom at least 21 were elderly and had completed their jail terms. Among the 21 elderly prisoners, six were suffering from age-related ailment. In its next meeting, the SRB will also decide the two high-profile criminals — Manu Sharma and Sushil Sharma. Manu Sharma, son of former union minister Venod Sharma, has spent 15 years in jail for the murder of Jessica Lall.
Sushil Sharma, a former Congress youth wing president, had shot dead his wife Naina Sahni in 1995 and attempted to burn her body in a tandoor (oven) later. The case infamously came to be known as the “Tandoor murder case.” Sharma has so far spent 23 years in prison.