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Abhi Verma, a resident of Hoshiarpur, was kidnapped on February 14, 2005. His father, Ravi Verma, received a ransom call demanding ₹50 lakh. When the ransom was not paid, the teenager was brutally murdered, and his body was found the next day in the fields in Daulatpur village. The convicts were found guilty of kidnapping for ransom, followed by murder, and were sentenced to death.
Chandigarh: More than two decades after the brutal kidnapping and murder of 16-year-old Abhi Verma, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has commuted the death sentence awarded to Jasbir Singh alias Jassa and another convict, holding that they will now serve imprisonment for the remainder of their natural lives, without any scope for remission or premature release.
A Division Bench comprising Justice Ashwani Kumar Mishra and Justice Rohit Kapoor ruled that the convicts “shall not be entitled to any commutation or premature release under any statute or rules made for grant of commutation and remissions.” The court held that multiple supervening circumstances had resulted in a violation of their fundamental rights under Article 21 of the Constitution of India.
Illegal solitary confinement
Allowing the appeals in part, the Bench noted that the appellants were subjected to illegal solitary confinement from December 2006 to 2009, in clear violation of the law laid down by the Supreme Court of India in Sunil Batra and subsequent judgments. The court rejected the State’s contention that the segregation was at the convicts’ request, observing that the documentary record conclusively established unlawful solitary confinement before exhaustion of judicial remedies.
The Bench also found an unreasonable and unexplained delay of more than four years in deciding the mercy petitions, attributing the lapse squarely to the State. It noted that after the dismissal of the review petitions in April 2011, the convicts were neither informed of their right to file mercy petitions nor provided legal aid, in breach of the Ministry of Home Affairs’ guidelines and binding judicial directions. The State’s attempt to shift the blame for the delay onto the convicts was categorically rejected.
Article 21 continues even after a death sentence
The court emphasised that the right to life and human dignity under Article 21 does not get extinguished even after a convict is sentenced to death. It observed that prolonged incarceration—over 20 years in this case—combined with illegal solitary confinement, inordinate delay in mercy proceedings, and the mental agony of living “in the shadow of death,” cumulatively amounted to a violation of constitutional guarantees.
“More than the physical ailments, what would definitely be a relevant consideration is the mental torture that the appellants have undergone while waiting for their end,” the Bench observed, adding that such infringement of human dignity is a valid ground for commutation.
History of the case
Abhi Verma, a resident of Hoshiarpur, was kidnapped on February 14, 2005. His father, Ravi Verma, received a ransom call demanding ₹50 lakh. When the ransom was not paid, the teenager was brutally murdered, and his body was found the next day in the fields in Daulatpur village. The convicts were found guilty of kidnapping for ransom, followed by murder, and were sentenced to death.
After their mercy petitions were rejected, the convicts approached the High Court seeking commutation. A single judge had dismissed their plea in July 2019, following which they filed separate appeals before the Division Bench.
Taking into account all the supervening circumstances, the High Court ordered that the death sentence be commuted and substituted with life imprisonment for the remainder of the convicts’ natural lives, bringing a legally complex and emotionally charged case to a decisive close while reaffirming the continuing force of constitutional protections, even for those condemned to death.
