Delhi HC orders premature release of ex President guard convicted for rape after 23 years' custody

New Delhi [India], February 4 : The Delhi High Court has set aside the order of the Sentence Review Board (SRB) and ordered the premature release of Ex-President Guard from custody after 23 years.
The President's Guard Harpreet Singh was convicted in the infamous Buddha Jayanti Garden gang rape case and was serving a life sentence.
The High Court, while granting premature release, considered the good conduct of the convict in custody and took into account the reformative approach of the judicial system.
Justice Neena Bansal Krishna, on January 30, allowed Harpreet Singh's petition for premature release from prison.
The order was uploaded on Tuesday. Advocate Sumer Singh Boparai appeared for Harpreet Singh
The premature release pleas were rejected 12 times by the SRB on the grounds of the gravity of the offence.
Justice Neena Bansal Krishna began the judgement writing with the couplet of Mir Ghulam Hasan to emphasise the value of time.
"Mir Ghulam Hasan serves as a poignant reminder that the passage of time is relentless and that moments once lost do not return," she said.
Justice Neena Bansal Krishna held, "In view of the aforesaid discussion, this Court concludes that the Minutes of the SRB dated February 23, 2024, and their subsequent approval by the Ld. Lieutenant Governor, are arbitrary, irrational, and contrary to the record."
"Accordingly, the Writ Petition is allowed. This Court directs that the Petitioner Harpreet Singh be released from custody forthwith," Justice Krishna ordered on January 30.
While the relief, the bench observed, "A perusal of Petitioner's rejection Orders, particularly the most recent Minutes of February 23, 2024, reveals a stark departure from these standards."
"The SRB's conclusion rests solely on the heinous crime, gravity, and perversity of the original 2003 offence, failing to mention the 25 years of satisfactory jail conduct or the Nil propensity reports. In many instances, the SRB uses open-ended terms like "etcetera", which this Court has characterised as dispositive of non-application of mind and an unfortunate shortcut that is completely opaque," the bench said in the judgement.
The high court also criticised the approach adopted by the SRB.
The bench stressed, "In its 12 rejections based on the same static ground - the gravity of the original offence committed in 2003, the SRB has demonstrated a bureaucratic haze that is unlikely to be cured by a 13th Application."
"As this Court has repeatedly emphasised, the gravity of an offence is a static, historical fact - it will never change, no matter how many decades pass. To allow the heinousness of a past act to act as a permanent bar to remission is to transform a life sentence into a retributive death by incarceration, rendering the State's reformative machinery entirely redundant," Justice Neena Bansal Krishna said.
She further said that to continue his incarceration beyond this limit without a specific, evidence-based finding of current dangerousness is a direct subversion of the Policy's own logic
"Driving the Petitioner back to the same body that has repeatedly failed to apply the governing policy would be an exercise in futility," the court said.
The high court pointed out that once it has been concluded that the Petitioner has met all the parameters for remission, the only decision to follow is the grant of Remission, for which it would not be in the interest of justice to refer back the matter to SRB.
While highlighting the significance of time in the judgement, Justice Neena Bansal Krishna referred to the quote of Franz Kafka, which reads as "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."
Justice Krishna said that, much like Gregor Samsa, the Petitioner has been trapped by the State in the frozen image of his past criminality - viewed perpetually as the gigantic insect of 2003, rather than the reformed individual of 2025.
"The SRB, by mechanically reiterating the heinousness of the original offence, as a constant and permanent bar to release, has refused to acknowledge that the Petitioner has successfully undergone a reverse metamorphosis: shedding the propensity for crime and earning his place back in humanity, through 25 years of exemplary conduct and discipline," Justice Krishna said.
The bench also referred to the petitioner's journey - from being a public servant who fell into crime to a prisoner who earned 21 years of clean conduct and multiple commendations - which demonstrates that the reformative objective of his sentence has been fulfilled.
The high court said that the reformative theory of punishment is a cornerstone of the Indian criminal jurisprudence, finding its roots in Article 21 of the Constitution of India, & reformation is the mechanism that honours the reformative theory.
"To permit decade-old crime to eclipse the verified reality of no propensity to commit crime would reduce the justice system to a retributive cage," the high court said.
The High Court said that it is the Court's duty to protect a convict's fundamental right to liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution, which would warrant immediate release.
The high court said that for the Petitioner, the time became static since 2003 when he, a Guard in the President's House, was put in jail for the most heinous and depraved crime of Rape and Robbery committed on a young girl. No amount of remorse and reformation over this long period has proven to be of any worth, as his Remission has been consistently rejected twelve times, since 2016.
The Petitioner was convicted under Sections 366 (Kidnapping), 376 (Rape), 394 (robbery), 34 IPC by the trial court on August 17, 2009.
An FIR was registered in 2003 at Police Station Chanakyapuri, New Delhi, under Sections 366/394/376(2)(g) of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. He was sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for life along with a fine of INR 5,000 on August 22, 2009.
The Petitioner filed an appeal against conviction and order on sentence before this Court, which was dismissed by the High Court on August 23, 2012.
The case of the prosecution, which has been accepted by the trial court, is that the four accused, who were wearing military uniforms, had gone to Buddha Jayanti Park in a military truck. There they met one boy and the prosecutrix. Two of them, Harpreet and Munish, caught hold of the boy and took him aside. Harpreet slapped him and took out Rs 100 from his purse. After walking some distance, the boy broke free and ran away.
The other two, Satyender and Kuldeep, caught hold of the prosecutrix, gagged her mouth and dragged her to the forest. They took her to the military vehicle, where Harpreet and Munish also joined them. Four of them forced her and made her sit in the backside of the military truck. After driving for about 5-10 minutes, the vehicle stopped, and the prosecutrix was made to get out of the vehicle and was taken towards the bushes. Thereafter, Harpreet and then Satyender raped her. Harpreet Singh also slapped her twice/thrice and took Rs.120 from her purse. Later on all of them left in the vehicle. The prosecutrix wept and cried, and after wearing her clothes started walking back.
After walking some distance, she met her friend, who had come looking for her along with the police.