Four women life convicts freed after 2 decades in jail

Ahmedabad: Eighty-two-year-old Baluben Solanki walked out of the Sabarmati Central Jail earlier this month after spending 25 years behind the bars after she was sentenced to life in a murder case in 1998.Like Solanki, three other women — Janakba Zala (73), Gauriben Nayak (66) and Hussainabanu Kureshi (65) — also walked free after spending two decades in jail. They could get off prison after the Gujarat High Court Legal Services Committee found out that these women convicts had already served more than 14 years of term, but were still languishing in the jail. The committee helped these women in making a formal request to the state government for grant of remission under the prevailing remission scheme.

According to the committee’s statement, the release of the four women convicts were possible after its panel advocate Aman Shaikh conducted a survey in the Sabarmati prison and found out that 13 women life convicts were still in jail despite them having spent more than 14 years, even though they were entitled to the benefits of the remission policy of the state government.The legal services committee has been putting in efforts to secure the release of nine other women convicts as well. The committee has stated that it “is continuously working on the issue of remission for convicts who are in custody for over 27 years especially when some have attained the age of over 70 years”.Besides trying for their release, the committee is also working on a mechanism where long parole can be granted to aged convicts who have completed more than 14 years in jail.All the four women convicts who have been released were punished on charges of murder and domestic violence. Their case for remission was not considered because they were facing the charges of cruelty as well under section 498A of the IPC along with section 302 of IPC. This was because the state government, in 2014, came out with a policy that benefit of remission cannot be granted to a convict who was punished for offences against women or for terrorism. In the previous remission policy of 1992, there was no such bar and all the convicts used to be treated equally. It was in 2014, the state government carved out the category of convicts who should not be extended the benefit of remission.In August 2022, a controversy erupted when state government released the convicts in the Bilkis Bano case of the post-Godhra riots. In April this year, the state government came out with a resolution that the powers of remission will be exercised by the government in the cases of prisoners if their conviction was recorded before 2014. The resolution said that the convict’s case for remission will be considered by looking at the date of conviction and not by considering the time of a prisoner’s appeal for remission, as the government had been doing it between 2014 and August 2022.