Recent time in
Bangladesh a question has been arisen whether imprisonment for life denotes
imprisonment till natural death or thirty years. On 26 June, the Chief Justice
of Bangladesh Surendra Kumar Sinha triggered the debate by saying life sentence
literally means imprisonment until one’s natural death while he visited to
Kashimpur Jail in Gazipur. However, Section 53 of the Penal Code (PC), 1860;
specifies five categories of punishments for offenders i.e. capital punishment;
imprisonment for life, which will be rigorous imprisonment; simple or hard
labour imprisonment, forfeiture of property and monetary fine. If it determines
any definite period then rest kinds of imprisonments can serve the purpose and
it would be a redundancy. Nonetheless, the PC inflicts life incarceration as
distinct punishment for certain grave nature crimes.
The perplexity mainly
arises from the provisions of the PC, the Jail Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure
(CrPC), 1898. Section 55 of the PC suggests that the Government may commute
punishment for imprisonment for life up to twenty years. That does not mean it
is highest 20 years of detention rather it is purely Government’s discretion
who can convert it in any period but not exceeding 20 yrs. In addition, Sec. 57
of the mentioned Code further implies that life sentence shall be counted as
thirty years of rigorous jail in calculating fractions of terms of
imprisonment.
Close scrutiny reveals that this provision is applicable only for the
purpose of 'calculating the fractions of terms of punishment'. When does the
need for 'calculating the fractions of terms of punishment' occurs? Look at S.
511 of the PC where it is stated that “whoever attempts to commit an offence punishable
by this Code with imprisonment for life or imprisonment, or to cause such an
offence to be committed, and in such attempt does any act towards the
commission of the offence, shall, where no express provision is made by this
Code for the punishment of such attempt, be punished with imprisonment of any
description provided for the offence, for a term which may extend to one-half
of the longest term of imprisonment provided for that offence, or with such
fine as is provided for the offence, or with both.”
Furthermore, Section 124A of the PC refers punishment for sedition is
imprisonment for life or any shorter term, to which fine may be added, or with
imprisonment which may extend to three years, to which fine may be added, or
with fine. But if a person is found guilty of an offence of attempt to commit
sedition then there is no clear provision of law by which punishment can be
imposed. In that case, Section 511 will be applied and punishments have to be
imposed by 'calculating the fractions of terms of punishment' according to S.
57. Hence in accordance with this section it has to be assumed that
imprisonment for life shall be reckoned as equivalent to rigorous imprisonment
for thirty years and after 'calculating the fractions of terms of punishment' i.e.
30 years, the highest punishment for the attempt to commit sedition will be 15
years.
Moreover, S. 65 of the same Code entails that if any offence be punishable
with imprisonment as well as fine and if the Court directs the offender to be
imprisoned in default of payment of the fine then the term of imprisonment
shall not exceed one-fourth of the term of maximum custody fixed for the
offence. Again S. 57 will come to resolve the circumstance for a life
imprisoned criminal, as we do not know when a person will demise naturally.
However,
the President has prerogative power to pardon anyone under Article 49 of the
Constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh and U/S. 402A of the CrPC.
Additionally, the Government also has discretionary power even without the
consent of the person sentenced to suspend, remit or commute sentence with or
without condition U/Ss. 54 and 55 of the PC and U/Ss. 401 and 402 of the CrPC.
In many countries life imprisonment is deemed as a prison term for the
convict’s entire life whereas in Mexico Germany, Australia, United Kingdom etc.
lifelong incarceration is an indeterminate but after undergoing
imprisonment for certain period, parole can be asked for. However, Art. 110 of the Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court (ICC) stipulates for the gravest forms of crimes e.g. war
crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, a prisoner ought to serve two
thirds of a fixed sentence, or 25 years in the case of a life sentence. The
highest determined prison sentence that can be imposed by the ICC, besides life
imprisonment, is 30 years. On the
contrary, in the Gopal Vinayak Godse V.
The state of Maharashtra and Others, AIR (1961) SC 600 and in many other
cases, the Indian Supreme Court observed that “…..unless the sentence is
commuted or remitted by appropriate authority under the relevant provisions of
the Indian Penal Code or the CrPC, a prisoner sentenced to life imprisonment is
bound in law to serve the life term in prison.” On the contrary,
Our
apex court in the Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh V. Abdul
Quader Molla case promulgated that “A sentence of imprisonment for life
must be treated as one of imprisonment for the whole of the remaining period of
the convicted person’s natural life. …………Section 57 does not say that imprisonment for life shall be deemed to be
imprisonment for thirty years for all purposes nor does it enable to draw any
such inference. So, prison authorities are bound to keep the accused persons
who are sentenced to imprisonment for life in jail treating such sentence for
the whole of the remaining of the convicted person's natural life unless he has
earned recursions for good conduct. In other words it is not for a definite
period.”
Hence, the Chief Justice is very
much truthful in his position in computing tenure of life sentence albeit there
is a confusion about duration of imprisonment for life among legal fraternity. Consequently,
we do not need to amend the law or declare a new verdict to punish a notorious
perpetrator lifelong in the name of imprisonment for life.
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