Beyond Retribution: Delhi High Court Intervenes in Premature Release Case of 1993 Hijacker

In a significant ruling concerning the limits of executive discretion in sentencing, the High Court of Delhi has set aside the decision of the Sentence Review Board ( SRB ) to decline the premature release of Hari Singh, a convict serving life imprisonment for the 1993 hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight. The court underscored that the state’s approach to remission must be rooted in reformative progress rather than a "statistics-dominated" focus on the gravity of the original crime.

A Long Shadow: The Hijacking of 1993

In March 1993, Hari Singh hijacked Flight IC 439, redirecting the aircraft on its route from Delhi to Madras. The incident, which ended in an emergency landing at Amritsar, resulted in Singh’s conviction under Section 4 of the Anti-Hijacking Act, 1982 , alongside charges under the Indian Penal Code. For over three decades, Singh has remained incarcerated, having served over 17 years in actual imprisonment and over 22 years including remissions. Despite his long period of confinement and an largely unblemished disciplinary record, the SRB had repeatedly denied his applications for premature release, citing the "terrorist" nature of the offence.

The Clash of Perspectives: Gravity vs. Reformation

The SRB ’s consistent rejection centers on the argument that the heinous nature of hijacking—an act the board characterized as "anti-national"—precludes leniency, regardless of the convict's conduct behind bars.

Conversely, the Petitioner argued that such an approach ignores the core objective of the state’s remission policy: the rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders. The High Court found the SRB ’s reasoning insufficient, noting that the board failed to account for the Petitioner's advanced age (70 years) and lacked a substantive, individual-focused psychological assessment regarding his current threat level to society.

Reinventing the Scope of Sentencing Review

Justice Sanjeev Narula, presiding over the matter, relied on recent internal jurisprudence—specifically Santosh Kumar Singh v. State (NCT of Delhi) and Vikram Yadev v. State Govt. of NCT of Delhi —to assert that the SRB cannot treat the "gravity of the offence" as an absolute bar.

The Court noted that while the original trial court was restricted by the mandatory sentencing of the Anti-Hijacking Act, judicial observations from the time suggested that Singh, who acted unarmed and without explicit intent to harm, was driven by misguided frustration rather than typical criminal greed. The current Court emphasized that failing to consider his reformative trajectory effectively nullifies the purpose of the prison system.

Key Observations

The judgment highlights several critical failures in the current SRB framework:

• On the limits of gravity as a criteria: "This Court... has already opined that the decision of the SRB cannot be based solely on the gravity of the offence committed by the convict serving life sentence as undoubtedly the cases considered by the SRB would involve heinous and serious offences."
• On the probative value of conduct: "Disregarding the conduct of the convict while under incarceration... reflects a patently erroneous and arbitrary approach adopted by the SRB , which undermines the very purpose of the remission policies of the State."
• On the need for multidimensional review: "The question of a convict’s likelihood to commit crime in the future must be evaluated on the basis of the reformative efforts undertaken by him as well as expert inputs, specifically in terms of a psychological assessment."

The Road Ahead

The High Court has remanded the Petitioner’s case back to the SRB , granting the board eight weeks to reconsider the application in light of the judicial observations regarding the Petitioner's reformation, age, and trial context. This judgment serves as a stern reminder to executive boards that the ultimate goal of the penal system is the restoration of the individual, provided they no longer pose a danger to society. The ruling paves the way for a more sensitive, evidence-based approach to the premature release of aging convicts.

By mandating that boards look past the "nature of the crime" and engage deeper with the "nature of the person," the Delhi High Court has once again signaled a shift toward a more humanized, reform-oriented justice system.