Today, On, 1st July, In the Priyadarshini Mattoo case, the Delhi High Court set aside the decision rejecting Santosh Kumar Singh’s plea for early release. The court observed an “element of reformation” and sent the matter back for fresh review.
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Tuesday set-aside the decision of the sentence review board that had denied a request for the premature release of Santosh Kumar Singh, who is serving a life sentence for the 1996 rape and murder of law student Priyadarshini Mattoo.
Justice Sanjeev Narula stated that he found an element of reformation in Singh and sent the matter back to the sentence review board for a fresh consideration of the convict’s plea for early release.
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The judge declared while delivering the ruling,
“I have found some element of reformation in him. The SRB decision is set aside and I have referred back the matter to SRB to consider it afresh,”
The court also established guidelines for the SRB to follow when reviewing prisoners’ requests, emphasizing the need for psychological assessments of convicts, which had not been conducted in this case.
A detailed judgment is pending.
In Singh’s 2023 petition, he sought to annul the SRB’s recommendation that rejected his plea for premature release during a meeting on October 21, 2021.
Senior advocate Mohit Mathur, representing Singh, argued that Singh has already served 25 years in prison, including time off for good behavior, and demonstrated satisfactory conduct, indicating his reformation and diminished risk of reoffending.
Mathur noted that Singh has been in an open jail for several years, suggesting he could be a productive member of society.
The court was previously informed that another SRB meeting occurred on September 18, 2024, during which Singh’s case for early release was again rejected. Priyadarshini Mattoo, 25, was raped and murdered in January 1996.
Singh, a law student at Delhi University, was initially acquitted by a trial court on December 3, 1999, but the Delhi High Court reversed this decision on October 27, 2006, finding him guilty and sentencing him to death.
Singh, the son of a former IPS officer, challenged both his conviction and death sentence in the Supreme Court, which upheld the conviction in October 2010 but commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment.
Case Title: SANTOSH KUMAR SINGH v. STATE (GOVT. OF THE NCT) OF DELHI