SC releases on bail 104-year-old serving life term for murder

NEW DELHI: Rasik Chandra Mandal was born in a nondescript village of Malda district in 1920, the year Indian National Congress launched a non-cooperation movement against the British. More than a century later, he is pleading with the Supreme Court as a lifer for his freedom, reports Dhananjay Mahapatra.
Convicted in 1994 in a 1988 murder case, when he was 68 years, and serving a life sentence, he was shifted to a correctional home at Balurghat, West Bengal from prison due to age-related ailments. His appeal against conviction was dismissed by the Calcutta HC in 2018 and later by the Supreme Court.
Mandal had filed a writ petition in SC in 2020, when he was a year short of century mark, seeking premature release citing old age and related ailments, while seeking exemption from the norm - spending 14 years behind bars to be eligible for parole or remission of sentence.
A bench of Justices A Abdul Nazeer, now retired, and Justice Sanjiv Khanna on May 7, 2021 had issued notice to West Bengal govt and asked superintendent of the correctional home "to file a status report regarding the physical condition and health of Mandal, who has been in jail since Jan 14, 2019".
The case got listed on Friday before a bench of CJI Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar, who asked for the status of Mandal from advocate Astha Sharma, who appeared for West Bengal govt. Sharma told the SC that Mandal had age-related health issues, but otherwise in a stable condition and that he would celebrate his 104th birthday shortly. The bench admitted Mandal's petition and passed an interim order directing release of Mandal "on interim bail/parole in the case lodged on Nov 9, 1988, at Manikchak police station in Malda district."
Mandal was convicted by the trial court on Dec 12, 1994, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He had appealed against his conviction in Calcutta HC immediately thereafter. However, the HC took nearly a quarter century to uphold his conviction and sentence on Jan 5, 2018. His appeal against the HC decision was dismissed by the SC on March 11, 2019. He had moved the writ petition through his 48-year-old son pleading that he be released from jail to spend the last days of his life with family members.