Specify if sentences are to run concurrently: Punjab and Haryana High Court

Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 22

In a significant judgment that will change the way multiple sentences are awarded to the convicts, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has directed the trial courts across Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh to specify whether these will run concurrently or consecutively.

“The court of first instance, while awarding multiple sentences of imprisonment in a trial, must specify in clear terms as to whether the sentences would run concurrently or consecutively and in case they were to run consecutively the order or sequence in which the same would run,” Justice Vikas Bahl asserted. The High Court Registrar-Judicial was also asked to circulate the judgment to all trial court judges in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh.

Justice Bahl asserted Section 31 of the CrPC provided that the court had the power to sentence a person convicted in one trial for two or more offences to several punishments. The punishments, when consisting of imprisonment to commence one after the expiration of other, would be inflicted in such order as the court may direct, unless the court directed such punishments to run concurrently.

Referring to Supreme Court judgments, Justice Bahl asserted the sentences would run consecutively where a person was convicted for two or more offences in a trial. But the sentence did not include life imprisonment and it was not specified that the sentences were to run concurrently.

Justice Bahl added life sentences could not be directed to run consecutively and had to necessarily run concurrently in case of multiple life imprisonment sentences. This was because life imprisonment meant full span of one’s life. Such sentences would, however, be superimposed so that remission or commutation in one did not result in remission of the sentence in others.