Report No. 39
14. Questions to be considered.-
While the legal position has thus been fully clarified in regard to persons sentenced to transportation for life before 1956, the question still remains as to how persons sentenced to imprisonment for life under any of the amended sections of the Indian Penal Code should be dealt with under the law as it now stands. Is such a sentence exactly the same as a sentence of rigorous imprisonment for life or as a sentence of simple imprisonment for life? Or is it a punishment different in quality, besides being different in duration, from a sentence of imprisonment of either description for a specified term?
Is it legally permissible for the Court passing the sentence to lay down that the imprisonment shall be rigorous or shall be simple? Is it obligatory under the law to do so? If, following the insissima verba of the penal provision, the Court simply passes a sentence of imprisonment for life, is it or is it not open to the prison authorities to subject the prisoner to hard labour? These are the various questions of practical importance that arise out of the amendments made in 1955.
Back
