The Delhi High Court on Tuesday set aside the Sentence Review Board’s (SRB) decision rejecting the plea for premature release of Santosh Kumar Singh, who is serving a life sentence for the 1996 rape and murder of law student Priyadarshini Mattoo. The court noted signs of reformation in the convict and remanded the matter back to the SRB for fresh consideration.
Justice Sanjeev Narula, while delivering the verdict, observed, “I have found some element of reformation in him. The SRB decision is set aside and I have referred back the matter to SRB to consider it afresh.”
The court also laid down guidelines for the SRB to follow while considering such pleas. It emphasised the need for psychological assessments of convicts—an aspect it found missing in Singh’s case. The detailed judgment is awaited.
Singh had approached the High Court in 2023, seeking quashing of the SRB’s recommendation from its October 21, 2021 meeting, which denied his premature release. His counsel, senior advocate Mohit Mathur, argued that Singh had already served 25 years, including remission, and had shown satisfactory conduct during incarceration. He has also spent the last several years in an open jail.
Despite a second SRB review on September 18, 2024, which again rejected his release, the High Court has now given Singh a fresh opportunity, acknowledging the possibility of his reformation.
Priyadarshini Mattoo, a 25-year-old law student, was raped and murdered in January 1996. Singh, then also a law student and the son of a senior IPS officer, was acquitted by the trial court in 1999. However, the Delhi High Court reversed the acquittal in 2006, convicting him of rape and murder and awarding the death penalty.
In 2010, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction but commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment.
