The Delhi High Court has ordered the immediate release of Harpreet Singh, a former member of the elite presidential bodyguard, serving a life sentence for gang-raping a 17-year-old Delhi University student at Buddha Jayanti Park in 2003, saying he had transformed from a prisoner to a reformed person.
Justice Neena Bansal Krishna said that prosecuting Harpreet Singh only for his 2003 crime, ignoring 21 years of innocent progress, would reject the reformist theory of sentencing. (Shutterstock)In 2009, Harpreet Singh along with Satender Singh, Kuldeep Singh and Munesh Kumar were convicted of gang rape. The 17-year-old Delhi University student was raped in October 2003 at the Buddha Jayanti Park behind the Rashtrapati Bhavan when she went to attend a function by the Dalai Lama. In August 2012, the High Court upheld Harpreet Singh’s life sentence.
In a January 30 order, a bench of Justice Neena Bansal Krishna said that prosecuting Harpreet Singh only for his 2003 crime, ignoring the perfect progression of 21 years, would reject the reformist theory of punishment, which relies on the possibility of human change.
The order issued on Tuesday said, despite meeting all reformatory criteria and exceeding the outer limits based on the Delhi government’s 2004 policy for premature release of life convicts, his continued detention would directly affect his fundamental rights to life and liberty.
“The petitioner’s journey from being a government servant to a prisoner who has achieved 21 years of clean conduct and multiple accolades proves that the reformative purpose of his sentence has been met,” the order said.
More Read
The court criticized the Sentence Review Board (SRB) for adopting a myopic approach while repeatedly rejecting his plea for premature release based solely on the nature and gravity of the offense, ignoring positive institutional reports, and issuing stereotypical “copy-paste” orders without rational explanation.
The bench observed that the SRB’s reasoning was not an assessment of a man, but a reassessment of the original judgment, which represented typecasting of the guilty based on a 22-year-old case, while completely undermining the state’s own assessment of successful reforms. The SRB, it said, failed to follow a fair process, consider relevant material and arrive at a decision that a reasonable body could reach.
“Rejection orders among the petitioners have been meticulously drafted, taking a cursory view only of the gravity of the offence, ignoring all other relevant considerations, in finely worded proforma paragraphs. Also, the reasoning process has become a copy-paste exercise without any other reason for rejection. The SRB has repeated the phraseology of the offence,” the social offense paragraph said. said the court.
“Such reasoning is an unfortunate shortcut and a bureaucratic sloppiness that fails to explain how the release of a reformed person after 25 years of imprisonment would harm the social order, especially in light of the number of paroles/furloughs received by him and a favorable report by all agencies.”
The court made the order while hearing Harpreet Singh’s plea for premature release under the Delhi government’s July 2004 policy, which sets the actual jail term at 14 years as the initial threshold for standard life imprisonment and up to 25 years for the most heinous crimes, and challenged the SRB’s decision in February 2024.
In his petition, advocate Sumer Singh Boparai argued, Harpreet Singh said that he had reformed during his imprisonment, was placed on the commendation roll, given recognition certificates at least three times and actively participated in various activities while maintaining diligence and discipline during his 25 years in jail.
He submitted that although he had been convicted of a heinous crime, he was no longer a risk of reoffending, as reflected in the prison authorities’ assessment, and noted that his plea for early release had been rejected 12 times in eight years.
Delhi Police, represented by Additional Standing Counsel Anmol Sinha, opposed the plea saying that each of his pleas for premature release has been properly considered as per policy and relevant reasons and he cannot claim premature release as a matter of right.
