New Delhi: The Supreme Court emphasised that life imprisonment shall not be in any way lesser than rigorous imprisonment and rejected the demand for a review of the position of the law on this matter.
A Bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao and BR Gavai has made this statement while hearing two appeals in the judgments of the Himachal Pradesh High Court and Gauhati High Court, reported The Indian Express.
The Bench is reported to have quoted the 1983 judgment in Naib Singh vs the State of Punjab to state that life imprisonment is not simple imprisonment.
"There is no dearth of judicial precedents where, in the matter of nature of punishment, imprisonment for life has been regarded as equivalent to rigorous imprisonment for life," the Bench said.
"It will have to be held that the position in law as regards the nature of punishment involved in a sentence if imprisonment for life is well settled and the sentence of imprisonment for life has to be equated to rigorous imprisonment for life," the judgment further read.