Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: Delhi HC, while examining the Sentence Review Board’s decision to deny premature release to Santosh Kumar Singh, serving life in the 1996 Priyadarshini Mattoo rape and murder case, observed that the board’s decisions seem to be influenced by public perception.Justice Anup J Bhambhani said on Thursday that while there was no doubt that the offence was heinous and the family of the deceased suffered a “permanent loss”, “SRB seems to be proceeding on public perception”.“You are a hugely unpopular person… Your name doesn’t sound good so I (SRB) am rejecting it,” the judge observed, flagging a trend HC detected in many petitions before it that arose from the board’s rejection of premature release. “There is something called reformation… 30 years in custody,” the court added.It listed Singh’s petition on the same issue along with similar other petitions on April 20. “You will be treated objectively. You will be treated in accordance with what I distil,” the court told Singh’s lawyer.The HC last month directed convict Singh to surrender after the victim’s brother Hemant Mattoo strongly opposed his plea seeking premature release. The court had then indicated it would consider Singh’s plea for remission only once he surrendered, ending his parole.Last year in July, a different HC bench, observing that Singh showed signs of reform, had set aside the board’s decision to reject his remission plea and asked it to take a fresh decision. It, too, had faulted the board for only relying on the gravity, cruelty and perversity of the crime and on objections raised by Delhi Police and the CBI.During Thursday’s hearing, senior advocate Mohit Mathur sought an early hearing on the remission plea and contended Singh has already spent 31 years in custody. He said despite HC’s exhaustive decision last year, the board rejected his case again on the same grounds.Justice Bhambhani pointed out there were “worse cases”, including that of one convict having spent 41 years in custody since the board was “just rejecting things” on account of the heinousness of the offence despite receiving recommendations to the contrary.In his main petition, Singh challenged the Nov 27, 2025, decision of the board rejecting his case for premature release after HC last year sent the matter back to the board.Even as the counsel for Hemant Mattoo opposed the plea to advance the date of hearing, arguing the convict committed a grave offence, HC responded that Singh had been punished for the same.“There is something called reformation. There is something called 30 years in custody. There is something called transfer to open jail,” the court said.“I understand your sentiments. What he did was unacceptable and the system punished him. He got life. The offence was heinous. What do we do? We confine a man like this?” justice Bhambhani wondered and highlighted that even the convict in the 1995 Tandoor murder case, Sushil Kumar, was released after serving 23 years in prison.Singh’s counsel gave the example of the convict in the 1999 Jessica Lal murder case, who was subsequently released.Mattoo, 25, was raped and murdered in Jan 1996. Singh, a law student of Delhi University, was acquitted by the trial court in the case on Dec 3, 1999, but the Delhi HC reversed the decision on Oct 27, 2006, holding him guilty of rape and murder and awarded him the death penalty.Singh, the son of a former IPS officer, had challenged his conviction and death sentence awarded by the HC. In Oct 2010, the Supreme Court upheld Singh’s conviction but commuted his sentence to life imprisonment.
