An appeal filed by a convict to the appellate court challenging his conviction will not come in the way of the prison authorities granting parole to him in the usual course, said the High Court of Karnataka.
The word pending ‘cases’ mentioned in the Karnataka Prison Rules, 1974, cannot include the appeal as the ‘cases’ can only mean any other criminal cases pending against the convict, the court said.
Delayed parole
Justice Suraj Govindaraj made this observation while quashing the decision of Kalaburagi Central Prison authorities in delaying parole to a convict, Arjun, on the ground that he had filed an appeal to the High Court against his conviction by the trial court and by treating this appeal as a pending ‘case’.
If the contention of the prison authorities that appeal is also a ‘case’ is accepted, then it would result in a situation where if a person convicted of an offence files an application for parole without filing an appeal then his application would be considered. But merely because a convict has filed an appeal, his application would stand rejected due to the filing of an appeal, the court said.
Fetter on executive
Such a situation, the court said, would amount to a fetter being imposed by the executive on a right to file an appeal by a convict which can never be the case, more so, when the right to file an appeal in terms of conviction is a right guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution of India.
Even where a bail application is rejected during the pendency of appeal against conviction, the application for parole would have to be considered in terms of the applicable law, and if no grounds are made out for release on parole, the application could be rejected, otherwise, the same would have to be allowed, the court observed.
