A trial court cannot order a convict to remain in prison till the rest of his life

The power to put a life sentence beyond the reach of remission belongs to the constitutional courts alone. A Sessions Court used it, the High Court did not notice, and the Supreme Court has substituted twenty-five years.

A life sentence in India is ordinarily a sentence for life, but one that the executive may cut short through remission. Courts have long had a way of closing that door — the special category sentence, a fixed term of years or a whole life term on which no remission may be granted. What was decided on 24 September 2026 is who may impose it.

In Naval Kishore and Anr. v. State of Punjab, a Bench of Justice Aravind Kumar and Justice Vipul M. Pancholi held that a trial court is not competent to do so, set aside a direction that two convicts “remain in prison till rest of their life”, and substituted twenty-five years of rigorous imprisonment without remission.

What happened in Ludhiana

The deceased was married to the first accused and they had two daughters, aged eight and five. In late December 2009 her father went to meet her at her matrimonial home, and on 26 December she came with her daughters and her husband to her father's house at Ludhiana in connection with an upcoming family wedding. On the morning of 27 December the offence occurred.

Three persons died — the woman and both her children — from injuries inflicted to their throats and other parts of the body with sharp-edged weapons.

The Trial Court convicted all three accused in April 2014 under Section 302 read with Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code. By a separate order two days later it sentenced them to rigorous imprisonment for life and directed that they “remain in prison till rest of their life”, with a fine of Rs 2,500 each and, in default, simple imprisonment for one year. The Punjab and Haryana High Court dismissed the appeals in December 2022 and affirmed both conviction and sentence.

Competent to impose life, not competent to remove remission

The appeal before the Supreme Court did not succeed on conviction. What it succeeded on was the form of the sentence, and the distinction the Court draws is precise.

There is no doubt, the Bench holds, that the Trial Court was competent to impose life imprisonment for an offence under Section 302 read with Section 34. But it was not competent to impose a special category sentence directing that the convicts remain in prison for the rest of their lives — a direction which in substance and effect excludes the statutory power of remission or commutation.

The power to impose a sentence of that kind, under which a convict must undergo imprisonment for a specified period beyond the ordinary remission or commutation regime, is vested only in the constitutional courts: the High Courts and the Supreme Court. A Sessions Court passing such an order is doing something the law does not permit it to do.

The High Court compounded it by omission. Affirming the sentence, it did not examine whether the Trial Court had been competent to impose it in the first place, and to that extent its judgment required interference.

Choosing the substituted sentence

Having removed the direction, the Court had to decide what should stand in its place, and it applied the sentencing principles set out in Navas — that the power is to be exercised sparingly and on a holistic consideration of the facts of each case, including the nature and gravity of the offence, the circumstances in which it was committed, the role attributable to each accused, the period of incarceration already undergone, the convict's conduct in custody, and the prospects of rehabilitation.

On the aggravating side the Bench was unsparing. The offence involved the premeditated murder of three persons, two of them minor children, which aggravates its seriousness. The manner of commission — injuries inflicted to the throats and other parts of the body with sharp-edged weapons — was a circumstance it held could not be lost sight of in fixing the sentence.

Against that it set the principle that sentencing is not an exercise determined solely by the nature of the crime.

The result is a sentence that keeps the substance of what the Trial Court was reaching for while coming from a court that may lawfully impose it. The direction that the appellants remain in prison for the rest of their lives was set aside, and in substitution both were sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for twenty-five years without the benefit of any statutory remission. The appeal was allowed in part.

Why this matters beyond the parties

Sentences of the “till the rest of natural life” kind are passed by Sessions Courts across the country, frequently in cases where a death sentence was sought and refused. This judgment says those directions are beyond the trial court's power, and that a High Court hearing the appeal must examine competence rather than simply affirm.

It does not disturb the sentence of life imprisonment itself, which a trial court may plainly impose. What it removes from the trial court's hands is the additional step of putting that sentence beyond the reach of remission — a step the constitutional courts retain, and which this Bench exercised itself, at twenty-five years, once the defective direction was gone.