Life terms in separate cases declared concurrent

The Lahore High Court (LHC) has declared that sentences of life imprisonment handed down to a convict by trial courts in two cases should run concurrently.

The convict, Ijaz alias Jujji, told the LHC in his petition that he was undergoing two sentences of life imprisonment along with other sentences announced in separate cases but the superintendent of jail had not treated them as concurrent. He prayed that the sentences be counted as concurrent rather than consecutive.

LHC Justice Muhammad Tariq Nadeem observed that the petitioner had been convicted but the trial courts while issuing the judgments had not included an order regarding the sentences in the cases running concurrently.

He observed in the judgment that courts in Pakistan generally take a charitable view in the matter of sentences affecting deprivation of life or liberty of a person. Unless some aggravating circumstances do not permit so, they liberally exercise power under Section 35 and 397 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) to order concurrent running of sentence in one trial and consolidation of earlier sentence while handing down sentence of imprisonment in a subsequent trial.

Section 35 of the CrPC, subject to Section 71 of Pakistan Penal Code, empowers the trial court to hand down several sentences to a person charged with multiple offences in the same trial and on its discretion direct that they may run concurrently.

Justice Nadeem observed that a perusal of Section 397 of CrPC showed that the order regarding sentences to run consecutively or concurrently should be passed at the time of deciding the case. If for any reason or inadvertent mistake it is not passed, "the matter could be settled by invoking the jurisdiction of this court", the LHC judge observed.

Section 397 provides that when a person is sentenced at a time when he is already undergoing imprisonment, then his subsequent sentence is to commence upon the expiration of the earlier sentence unless the court has specifically given directions that subsequent sentence run concurrently with the previous one.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 4^th, 2022.